


My Way Home Is Through You

by myracingthoughts



Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo [21]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Developing Relationship, F/M, Feelings Realization, Protective Bucky Barnes, Scientist Wrangler Darcy Lewis, Time Travel, X-Men References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myracingthoughts/pseuds/myracingthoughts
Summary: Jane Foster’s failed experiment somehow lands her and Darcy Lewis in 1940s Brooklyn. After running into a familiar face, they return to the present only to find they haven’t come back alone.And things only get stranger from there.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927495
Comments: 175
Kudos: 253
Collections: Darcy Lewis Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I promised another Wintershock series, and @treaddelicately had the audacity to mention a character in a movie we were watching reminded her of 1940s Bucky Barnes. Long story short, I couldn’t get it out of my head, and here we are. Felicia, this is all your fault. It also crosses off square A2 - Time travel for Darcy Lewis Bingo.
> 
> This fic will be updated once a week until it’s finished.
> 
>  **Notes about the timeline:** This fic is a canon-divergent mash-up of the comics and MCU timelines, and is not Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War, or Endgame compliant.
> 
> Please heed the rating and tags, as this story will contain canon-typical violence, themes, darkness and angst.
> 
> And with all that out of the way, I hope you enjoy it!

Jane Foster was as good as dead to the world.

Floating between two machines (hooked up to some old CRTs she managed to fish out of the trash at their last lab gig), there was a cavernous crease between her eyebrows as she tried to get the settings just right. For what? Darcy Lewis wasn’t quite sure. It had been a few weeks of this particular after-hours project, and Jane was too head down for Darcy to really ask about it. 

But seeing an opportunity as Jane came up for breath, wiping her brow, Darcy struck.

“So, what is it supposed to do?” she asked, fingers ghosting over the nuclear-hot cases of the ‘90s computer monitors, clearly doing overtime.

Darcy knew better than to try to interfere with Jane’s science, standing at the edge of the room and watching on in case she needed any emotional support of cheerleading. Maybe even a snack or caffeine. That was really where she excelled as far as lab work went— well, _this_ lab work in particular. Because honestly, as qualified as Darcy was to manage the chaos that was Jane’s contracted research —she could read and write those reports in her sleep— _this_ was not that. 

No, it was three in the morning, and Jane was on another one of her scientific breaks, with Darcy only knowing enough to say whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t covered under their lab insurance.

Not that she would ever say that out loud, lest the Foster rage come out full force.

“It should open an Einstein-Rosen bridge from here to Asgard…” Jane replied, lost in thought and trailing off, but Darcy could tell there was more she wasn’t saying.

Probably a whole lot more, frankly.

“Why am I sensing an ‘ _or_ ’ at the end of that sentence?” Darcy asked with a click of her tongue, eyes narrowing as the scientist looked back at her.

“ _Or_ ,” Jane started, offering a bashful smile. “Or it rips a hole in the space-time continuum.”

Darcy waited for the joke, or the punchline she knew wasn’t coming. Something along the lines of an episode of Punk’d or even a ‘no big deal!’ Her skin prickled, her heart beat uncomfortably fast as Jane continued fidgeting with the knobs and buttons, the only sounds following her admission.

“Um, I’m the first to admit, I don’t know what any of that means— hell, I don’t know how to translate half the science that comes out of your mouth— but that sounds bad, Jane,” Darcy murmured. “That’s bad, right?”

“Confirmed,” Jane shot over her shoulder like it was any other day. “Definitely bad.”

But that didn’t seem to stop her and as she continued with the tinkering, scribbling notes down on spiral-bound pages and muttering to herself about some readings of some level. 

Darcy had known she’d been working on other projects on the side. Jane was never one to be complacent doing contracted lab work for some big corporation—especially Stark Industries. But out of all of the possibilities, Darcy didn’t think she was trying to do the _one_ thing everyone had asked her to hold off on. 

But the heart wants what it wants, she supposed. And Asgard was pretty sweet, as far as space travel was concerned, at least from what she’d heard.

“And then if I just press this— Darcy, might want to close the door behind you.”

But before Darcy could even think to tug on the doorknob, a flash of light and the warbled clicks and beeps of the machines around them seemed to tunnel in, with the floor seemingly dropping out from beneath them.

Darcy was still yelling into the abyss as her feet hit the ground, softer than she imagined from decades of cartoon watching.

“What the hell happened?” Darcy groaned, taking a look around her, heart restarting as she found the slim brunette scrambling back to her feet. “Jane?”

“We travelled… somewhere?” Jane said to no one (or maybe herself) as she, too, surveyed the surrounding area.

It seemed to be an alleyway, probably New York? Even in the evening light, she could see brick was less ashy and grimy than she remembered ever seeing back home, but the honking and bustling of the city seemed to fit the bill. Darcy quickly grabbed for Jane’s arm, feeling a little less confident alone in the city, without a jacket or a purse, no identification and no idea how the hell they were supposed to get back to the lab from here.

Walking slowly out of the alley, past a tin trash can and onto the sidewalk, they looked out to find cars. They were definitely cars, Darcy realized, but these weren’t 2000s models, never mind 2010s. All big, round lines and hard, shiny chrome, sparkling in the gas lamps.

Was there some kind of convention in town, maybe a film shoot, or…?

“Jane, where are we?” Darcy asked, voice wavering as she stared wide-eyed at the scene around her.

“I think the question is, _when_ are we?” Jane breathed, kneeling to pick up a newspaper that had blown into her feet.

 _September 12, 1940,_ was the headline inscribed at the top of the black and white page.

1940.

The past. They were in literal history. They were several decades away from being born and about to be in a world war situation, and— it all seemed kind of normal? Sure, outdated tech and way fewer skyscrapers, but strangely normal otherwise. 

If she was honest, Darcy had kind of expected the past to look a little more sepia-toned or something.

“How the fuck—?” Darcy started as Jane continued to gape at the paper in their hands.

They weren’t prepared for this. Hell, they weren’t even dressed for this, she realized, looking down at her jeans and knit sweater. They were so out of their element that all they could do was stare blankly at each other. Darcy was just about to reach over and pinch them both when a voice called out from over the noise.

“You ladies need a hand over there?” the man called out from across the street. “You look a little lost.”

Darcy could’ve snapped her neck at the speed at which her eyes flew over to the voice, attached to a body that was definitely live in technicolour. And in that split-second appraisal, Darcy realized she’d see him before. In several textbooks, in fact. And some movies, some documentaries, maybe even some street art if she thought hard enough.

Plus websites, memorials and even SHIELD paperwork.

“Bucky Barnes,” Darcy breathed before she could consider the consequences. 

The immediate one being a swift swat from Jane.

“How’d you know that?” he crooked a brow as he neared, sizing them up, head to toe. “I definitely wouldn’t have forgotten a face like yours, sweetheart.”

Darcy went beet red, nervously chuckling, as she tried to piece together some reasoning, “Musta missed me. Maybe indulged a little too much at a dance hall?”

He hummed, still unconvinced but didn’t turn to leave.

“Maybe. Well, I suppose we should make this an official introduction then, gloss over the last one?” he said, offering his outstretched hand with a boyish smile. “James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky to you, at your service.”

“Darcy,” she replied, still a little awestruck before snapping herself out of it and motioning over to Jane. “And this is Jane.”

Bucky shook her hand too, not lingering as long as he did with Darcy— but maybe she was just projecting.

“Say, you two don’t exactly look dressed for the weather. I was just about to grab a coffee at the local diner if you wanna join?”

Did Bucky Barnes just ask them out for coffee? Wait, did Bucky Barnes just ask them _out_? She’d heard a time or two about his smooth lines, how he’d been a bit of a ladykiller back in the day. But seeing him in the flesh, the way those big blue eyes stared back at her, it was hard to ignore the magnetism.

“You’d take two girls you don’t know out to coffee?” Jane clearly couldn’t strip the skeptical tone out of her voice, eyes narrowing.

But Darcy didn’t blame her; that wouldn’t exactly have been trustworthy or commonplace in their time. Especially in New York. And they still didn’t know what to expect from the 1940s. A lifetime of movies, television and book-reading had only prepared her for so much.

Darcy quietly cursed herself for not watching more period pieces.

Bucky shrugged, “Seemed like the right thing to do, lack of proper coats considered?”

It was clearly his nicer way of saying they looked out of place. And that they were. Darcy looked to Jane for approval — or any idea of what the hell to do next, frankly — and realized she suddenly was more than a little torn.

This complete stranger they’d known for all of ten minutes was listening to their crazy, out of place ramblings and offering to buy them coffee. Either he was expecting one hell of a story out of them, or he was a kinder person than even the history books made him out to be.

The freaking Mother Teresa of Brooklyn.

“Maybe we should sit down somewhere and try to figure this out,” Jane murmured under her breath as Darcy struggled to find her words.

“Y-yeah, sure,” Darcy managed to spit out with a bashful smile. “That’d be _swell_.”

That was also about the extent of her 1940s lingo, so most of the rest of the walk was in silence, as Jane fidgeted with the device she’d managed to bring back in time with them, trying to keep the glorified garage door opener out of view of the passersby.

“You two running from something…? Or someone?” Bucky turned to ask in a low voice, clearly noticing how they were eyeing their surroundings suspiciously.

“No,” Darcy started, not quite sure how to explain it. “We’re uh, new to the city. Just a little lost.”

And that seemed to placate him for the time being, as he turned back around. Bucky led them to a nearby diner, one that wouldn’t have looked that out of place, even in her day. A curving countertop lined with stools, men reading newspapers that reached up over their heads and cigarette smoke wafting up to the ceiling. It almost felt like home.

They took a booth near the back of the restaurant, and Bucky flagged a waitress with a carafe and three mugs in her grip.

“So, where are you two originally from?” Bucky asked, waiting until Jane and Darcy had both taken their first sip before launching into the questions.

“New Mexico.”

“Maine.”

Jane and Darcy glared at each other, clearly not on the same page with their backstory, before sheepishly smiling at Bucky and leaving the rest up to him.

But that might not have been the best thing to leave open-ended.

“Are you two…?” he asked vaguely, hand motioning between the pair.

“Us?” they both squeaked out, suddenly very much on the same train of thought as they realized what he was implying. “No!”

“We’re in town for work,” Jane said vaguely. “Not a lot of jobs back where we’re from.”

And with a jerky nod, Bucky lapsed into silence, probably placated by their flimsy explanation.

Darcy must have spaced out for a bit, letting Jane answer Bucky’s remaining questions— something about a dead parent and an aunt needing help with the children. Probably the plot of one of the romance novels she hid (quite poorly) in their lab space. The ones with well-worn spines, flagged pages, and covers that probably should have stayed in the 1980s.

It was the near-tumble her cup of coffee took that snapped her out of it. Had it not been for Bucky’s steadying hand and excellent reflexes, her hand would have knocked it all the way to the floor.

She tried to ignore where his hand met hers, face already flaming from her fumble. 

“Whoops, doll. You alright there? Nearly lost your mug,” Bucky asked, voice low and eyes wide.

Concerned, maybe? She couldn’t quite read it.

“I, uh…” Darcy couldn’t find the words, lost in those silvery blue eyes twinkling back at her.

His mouth curved into a bit of a smirk, and she suddenly lost all the air in her lungs, “You always this klutzy, or is it just me?”

“She’s always this klutzy.”

“Jane! I am not,” Darcy huffed, shooting her a choice glance as she crossed her arms. “Just got lost in thought, is all. Sorry.”

Her stomach lurched at the little dimple that revealed itself in Bucky’s cheek when he smiled. His blue eyes drifted from hers to Jane before flicking back to the waitress across the room.

“I’ll be right back,” he offered quietly, tapping the table as he lifted himself out of the seat and waltzed towards the till.

Out of earshot of Bucky, Darcy craned her neck towards Jane, looking for some kind of update on their _unique_ situation.

“Are we going soon or?”

Not that she wasn’t enjoying the company, but Darcy knew that once they stepped into the outside world alone, once this polite interaction was over, they were kind of screwed. It wasn’t like anyone was doing this level of science in this neck of the woods, not at this point in history as far as they knew.

Never mind having to explain how exactly they got here in the first place, which Darcy wasn’t even sure _Jane_ could manage at this point.

“The return device isn’t working,” Jane said, sounding a little strained. “I can’t figure out why.”

Darcy watched her deftly swap out the batteries under the table for a set she’d happened to have in her pockets, jamming the button until her fingernail was solid white with the pressure. Eyes glassy, panicked, shallow breathing.

Even Jane Foster was in crisis.

“We’re stuck?”

Darcy’s throat tightened as her words hung in the air, Jane offering a half-hearted shrug.

“Looks like it. Until we can figure this out, at least.”

“What are we going to do? Where are we going to stay?” she had a hard time keeping her voice down or the panic out of her tone. 

Sure, they’d fought aliens before, and maybe she wasn’t in nearly as much danger here as she was back home, but Darcy Lewis couldn’t cope with being stuck in the 1940s. She knew the universe had a sick sense of humour, but that couldn’t be where their story ended. 

“Darcy, I don’t know.”

But Darcy couldn’t take that as a final answer. There was no way they were leaving the comfort of this diner without at least some kind of next step.

“Jane, we need somewhere to stay for the night. This isn’t going to fix itself, and what are the chances?” Darcy hissed, lowering her voice even further. “What are the chances that it was _him_ in that exact moment, at that exact place?”

Jane’s eyes locked to Darcy’s from across the table as her words set in.

“Stay with me.”

Jane and Darcy’s heads both whipped around to see Bucky there, leaning against the doorway, having clearly overheard their conversation. They looked at each other like he’d just grown another head.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jane said with a shake of her head.

“C’mon. Steve’s on bedrest at his place, and mom’s working most of the day anyway,” Bucky cajoled. “And Becca, my little sister, won’t say nothing if I bribe her with a Hershey bar.”

Darcy looked at Jane, silently pleading with her. If they didn’t have a plan, if they weren’t going to cross paths with a bunch of other significant historical figures, they might as well have a place to stay for the night, away from prying eyes.

“I swear, it will be no trouble at all. Stay with me,” Bucky urged, face creasing at his next thought. “I can’t let two dames walk into the night alone with no place to do. It just ain’t decent.”

Darcy looked to Jane one last time, one last fleeting look before the words finally left her lips.

“Fine, that...” Jane seemed to lose all steam as she conceded, “that would be very nice of you.”

Bucky grinned like he’d just won a bet, a smile on his face as he slapped down a few bills on the table and led them out of the restaurant. Jane and Darcy trailed behind him as he led them to his house, shoulder-to-shoulder, as he shot them questions back and forth during the walk.

Jane shot Darcy an unimpressed look as they wove their way through the city. That crease was returning to her brow, but Darcy was pretty sure it wasn’t about science. Whatever it was, it looked like she was about to blow, huffing out breaths with every few steps behind Bucky.

And just when the sounds of the city were loud enough, and they were out of Bucky’s earshot, Jane turned to hiss, “No, Darcy. You can’t do this right now.”

“Do what?” Darcy hissed back, crooking a brow.

“ _That look_. I know that look Darcy,” Jane explained with a wave of her hand.

She didn’t need to say more for Darcy to understand what she was getting at, but it was hard not to be entranced by the man in front of them. The one who’d already shown them so much kindness in just a couple of hours. 

Darcy deflated as Jane went on, “I’ve _been_ that look. But we don’t know how this will affect our timeline. The first rule of hypothetical time travel is—”

“Don’t fuck up anything in the past, I know, I know,” Darcy groaned, throwing her head back in exasperation before quickly having to straighten her face as Bucky looked back at her. She added through the side of her mouth, “And I think we’re past hypotheticals at this point, Jane.”

She shrugged, “Shared delusion is still on the table as far as I’m concerned.”

They didn’t have time to argue any further, arriving at a brick building with a creaking metal staircase at the rear. Bucky ducked in first, revealing a chocolate bar in his hand to bribe his sister into silence presumably. He reappeared a few seconds later, ushering them past the threshold and into the small two-bedroom apartment. 

Neither of them wanted to ask about what the usual sleeping arrangements were in the small place.

“You two should take the bed; I’ll take the couch outside,” Bucky explained, tilting his head towards the back room.

Jane raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘what, no moves from the alleged ladykiller?’ but Darcy wouldn’t have assumed anything else. Not from the way he’d paid for their drinks, how he hadn’t scrutinized them or asked intrusive questions. How he just _trusted_ them.

Sure, maybe chuck it up to idealism or naiveté, but there was something there that she could see. Something that stuck in her head as Jane and she traced her fingertips over the sheets and surveyed the bedroom. Her eyes caught the framed photos on the bedside table— wedding photos, she realized as the door creaked open to reveal Bucky with a pile of folded cloth in his arms. 

“Just wanna make sure you two’ll be warm enough,” he explained.

He threw an extra quilt over the bed and catching Darcy staring wide-eyed back at him with a signature smirk.

“Goodnight, Jane and Darcy,” he said under his breath as he left and closed the door behind him, leaving Darcy a little more than breathless.

“Yeah, definitely none of _that_ ,” Jane confirmed, sounding a little smug as she started emptying her pockets onto the bed.

“Maybe we should get some sleep, Jane,” Darcy suggested, watching as Jane stifled a yawn behind her hand. Darcy also half-hoped they’d magically wake up and find this had all been a bad dream.

Sure, it was a longshot, but clearly _anything_ was possible.

“But if I can just get—”

There was a clatter in that instant, somewhere around Jane’s feet as something bounced off the top of the bed. And for a split second, Darcy wondered whether she should reach over and pick it up, but that second didn’t last long. The familiar warble screeched through Darcy’s ears, eyes screwing shut as she felt that gust of air fly through them, and she landed on (very) solid ground.

“We’re back?” Darcy croaked, a little scared to open her eyes after their first trip.

Her heart restarted as soon as they landed on Jane, crumpled in a heap a few feet away.

Jane groaned, “I didn’t think we’d ever see these stupid machines again.”

But then there was another shuffle, another scramble to feet across the room from them. Their heads swivelled around to meet the other person in the lab.

“What the hell just happened?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, wow! Thank you for all the reads and lovely comments so far 💜 Hope you enjoy a little more 1940s Bucky.

The first thing Darcy Lewis did before her brain broke and she sank back down to the floor was to stare at the giant clock above the door that read 3:41AM, with the same day’s date just above the numbers. There was a brief flash of a thought, something along the lines of their hours-long romp in vintage Brooklyn only taking twenty minutes present time, but her brain was firing on all cylinders and couldn’t quite hold onto that particular thread for very long. 

Jane was safe. She was safe. Those were the important parts, she tried to remind herself.

Darcy’s eyes swept the lab for any sign of interference, any super-spy Ashton Kutcher types ready to jump out and yell, “You’ve just been Punk’d!” But there was nothing but the tittering of machines and the quiet mutterings of the man who’d been brought so far into the future he probably thought he was hallucinating.

Not that she could blame him; she was starting to assume the same thing, frankly. 

Jane’s shared delusion theory would have been a lot more believable if the entire lab hadn’t looked as untouched as it did before they left. There were no sirens or alarms, no panicked message from JARVIS. It was like no one had even noticed they were gone.

But as much as Darcy tried to blink away the 1940s relic standing in front of them, in just an undershirt and suspenders, hair rumpled and half-ready for bed —just the way she’d last seen him— Bucky Barnes was still there. 

Here, in 2014.

Bucky started to realize it too, going from bewildered to pinching himself to verging on upset. His face screwed up as he tried to take in the miscellaneous machinery and tech lining the walls. Darcy could see the frustration and the fear bubbling to the surface as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at them for any explanation.

And it was hard to ignore the tremor in his voice as he managed to bark, “Where the hell did you bring me? Who _are_ you, really?”

Darcy was already on the floor by this point, staring up at Jane weakly as she too tried to find the words to tell him he wasn’t exactly in Kansas anymore— or _Brooklyn_ as it was. She assumed he might have gotten the reference, at least.

But Jane seemed ready to take the lead on this one, clearly unruffled by the time travel experience. Darcy wondered off-hand if it was somehow more comfortable than travelling to Asgard.

“This is Darcy Lewis, and I’m Dr. Jane Foster—” Bucky’s eyes bugged out at her title, but to his credit, he didn’t interrupt. “—and unfortunately, we’re all part of a science experiment that went a little wrong. We’re in Manhattan.”

The blank look on his face made Darcy’s heart hurt, and Jane’s explanation, while tactful, was only exacerbating her headache. This was their fault, and they couldn’t baby him any more than they already had, not when he was stuck in the middle of the action.

“That _experiment_ ,” Darcy added, voice rising above Jane’s, “somehow involved time travel. So I guess the real question would really be ‘ _when_ are you?’ Which would be the year 2014.”

Jane shot her a dirty look, and Darcy wasn’t sure if it was because she was being too blunt for her liking or stealing her thunder. Either way, neither of them had time to start an argument, not with this kind of matter at hand.

Bucky stared at them blankly, still in a defensive position, a yard away from either of them. She could almost see him trying to process what they’d just said, line by line.

“Time travel?” Bucky clucked, half-waiting for a punchline by the incredulous expression on his face. “You’re tellin’ me you’re time travellers? From the future? From the year two thousand and fourteen?”

Darcy shook her head, “I’m telling you we didn’t exactly mean to be, but that’s what we ended up.”

“So it was a mistake? I’m not supposed to be here?” His blue eyes darted between Jane and Darcy, and she could see the panic rising in him. “But I was just at home, with Becca and— what happened to Becca, and my mom and Stevie—?”

“They’re all where you left them,” Jane assured, voice softer still. “And we’re going to get you back to them, we promise.”

Darcy raised a brow at her for that one. Jane was never one to comfort or talk in absolutes, especially with how finicky science and the nature of her _particular_ brand of physics was. But she could see that determination in her eyes and knew that, much like finding a route to Asgard, Jane wouldn’t stop until she’d solved it.

She just hoped it wouldn’t take as long as this whole Asgard thing had… since it had already been a few _years_.

All Bucky had to offer was a jerky nod, rubbing the bare skin on his arms like he was cold— Darcy just hoped it wasn’t shock. Dusting herself off as she shakily rose to her feet, Darcy turned to him, palms out in surrender like she was approaching some kind of spooked animal. 

“I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but we’re going to need you to trust us. We want to get you back home.”

For a split second, she honestly thought he was going to fight her on it, lash and storm out of the lab and find himself in the middle of Times Square in a repeat of Steve’s introduction to the 21st Century. But after a second of blinking, those stormy blue eyes boring into her, he nodded like he’d realized something.

“OK,” he breathed. “I’ll trust you, even if this is the world’s weirdest dream.”

There was a hint of a grin there, as Bucky put on what Darcy recognized as a brave face. He looked so much younger in the light of the future, she realized. He was at that blissful barely-in-his-twenties stage of not knowing what real fear was. This Bucky Barnes hadn’t seen the horrors and atrocities of war yet, hadn’t seen it up close and personal.

Hadn’t died as a result of them.

“Here,” Darcy started, cutting her own thoughts off as she pulled an oversized heather grey hoodie off her lab chair and threw it at him. “Warm-up, and we’ll figure out next steps.”

Darcy watched Jane staring at the corner of the room, completely tuned out from the rest of the world as the calculations flashed through the inside of her skull. She knew better than to interrupt, waiting for some glimmer of insight to hit her before she spoke up.

“We need— _you_ need to scrub the security footage for the last hour and hide him until I can figure this out,” Jane said a few seconds later, snapping back to Darcy with a slight frown.

Darcy furrowed her brow, “Where the hell am I supposed to hide him?”

But Jane didn’t look bothered, pulling her hair out of her face and into a hair tie as she started to think.

“Your place,” Jane said decisively. “The residential suites are the only rooms besides bathrooms that don’t have cameras in them.”

“So I’m on babysitting duty?” Darcy almost groaned, sneaking a peek at Bucky, who was thankfully immersed in the blinking lights and LED screens on display.

She didn’t want to seem like an ungrateful host, after all. Especially when she was technically returning a favour.

Jane shook her head, “A hint of espionage with the security bit. Plus, you weren’t about to complain about spending time with him back in 1940, Darcy. Suck it up. Get him out of here, I have to piece this together. There was clearly something I missed…” she hummed, trailing off as she flipped through her readings.

Darcy knew better than to argue with Jane when she was thinking, especially not when the stakes were this high. But dropping her voice down to something only a super-soldier could hear, Darcy voiced the one concern she couldn’t ignore.

“What about Steve?”

“Not a word _to_ or about Steve or Tony,” Jane hissed without hesitation, nearly dropping her clipboard. The scientist’s composure was long gone as she stared into the depths of Darcy’s soul with as threatening a look as she could manage. “We still don’t know what effect having him in our timeline will have on either end, or _ours_ , even. God, this is such a mess,” she griped, rubbing her face with her hands. “I need a coffee or six before I can even start to think about this.”

“I’ll—” Darcy started, but Jane waved her away.

“Go hide him, do what you need to do and get some rest. I’ll work on it.”

Darcy hadn’t seen Jane this stressed since SHIELD had swooped in with the whole Thor thing in New Mexico. The frown lines were back in full force, eyes unblinking as she searched the screens. Normally, she wouldn’t step in, would dare question her— she trusted Jane above anyone else, after all— but this felt different.

More urgent, maybe. Erring on the side of world-end-y potential if she thought about it too long.

Darcy reached over to set her hand on Jane’s shoulder, “Are you sure?”

Jane’s expression softened, recognizing the sisterly concern that only Darcy Lewis could manage in a moment like this.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. Just go.”

Darcy nodded dimly, approaching an already pacing Bucky Barnes across the room.

“I’ll take you to my place for the night. It’s just a few floors up, but we have to be careful along the way,” she explained as she gently pulled the hood of the sweater over his head.

“Got it, boss,” he shot back, fidgeting with the drawstring on the hood.

She gestured for him to follow her down the winding hallways with a nudge of her chin, passing empty labs and offices. There was a moment she thought they’d get away, awkward chat-free, but Bucky Barnes of 1940 seemed to like silence as much as Darcy did— which was to say, not at all.

“So, is this like A Christmas Carol? You supposed to teach me a lesson, and then I go back to my time and learn it?”

Darcy almost snorted at the reference before quickly coming up with a time-sensitive alternative that was a little closer to the truth.

“More like The Time Machine,” Darcy murmured, watching the corners for security guards as they made their way to the elevator. “H.G. Wells?” she added to his blank look.

“No, I know it,” Bucky replied, surprising her. “But that’s fiction. Like, outta this world fiction. There’s no way—”

“Kid,” Darcy said without a hint of irony. “There’s a lot of things you can’t even fathom that turned out to be true. I don’t want to give you nightmares, but you’re going to have to trust me on this.”

And that seemed to shut him up, mouth snapping shut as he tried to process the little she’d already told him. The rest of the elevator ride to her room was silent, though Darcy snuck a few glances to see his eyes light up at the panel, sweeping the halls for all the fancy tech and doodads. 

Maybe she was probably a little too invested in his reactions, but part of her was cataloguing all the little things he wouldn’t see in his time for a few more decades, at least. Not that _he_ would see them, but—

No, she wasn’t going to think about that anymore, shaking her head to clear the thought.

Locking the door behind them, she ushered him into her apartment, thankful she hadn’t been a total slob lately, but something still felt off. Like she’d missed something. It wasn’t until she got back to her room that Darcy realized there was still an invisible, omniscient elephant in there with them: JARVIS.

The stupid, glorified tattletale AI. 

They weren’t always on the best of terms. JARVIS may have ruined a few office pranks for her, and as much as he was supposed to be an impartial figure ( _hello! AI!_ ), he always leaned on the side of telling Tony whatever he wanted to know and saving him from most embarrassment.

It would be one thing if Darcy was trying to sneak a cat into her room, but she figured a human being from a whole other time period would probably be a deal-breaker.

“Fuck,” Darcy hissed, mentally weighing her options as she stared up at the empty ceiling. But as much as she tried to come up with some other sort of solution, she knew there was only one. “JARVIS, activate privacy protocol Puerto Antiguo for the foreseeable future.”

It was the only ‘get out of jail free’ card she’d negotiated for herself when Jane and Darcy moved into the Tower. They each got one opportunity to blackout the security protocols in their spaces, for any reason, no questions asked. 

Frankly, Darcy assumed her use would be a little sexier than time travel-y, but here they were.

“Activated. Initiating shutdown in private quarters.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, along with the last of the disappointment at having to use up her carte blanche access, her gaze settled back to the man still searching for the source of the disembodied voice. Who was probably also too prideful to ask about it outright.

Or maybe he was still working on the whole dream hypothesis.

But as he neared the windows, looking down at the city 70 floors below them, she could see the air knocked out of his lungs, “So this is the future, huh?”

Darcy bit her lip at Bucky’s words, feeling a little out of her league now that they were away from the security of the lab. Her apartment was bare, hardly used, really only slept in. She didn’t invite people over or host parties or really even socialize that much. But here she was, a stowaway in hand, and her heart was suddenly beating at a thousand beats a second as the gravity of the situation set in.

“Don’t look that different,” he murmured, gaze locked on the streets below. “Thought you science types would have figured out flying cars by now.”

She managed a breathy, if not strained, chuckle in response, clutching the arm of the nearby couch to steady her practically vibrating self. What could she even say to that? What could she offer that would make this any less strange or more real?

It was three in the morning, and Darcy Lewis was pretty sure she was hanging by a single thread as she stared at him, unable to come up with the words that would make this all better.

“Aren’t you going to tell me this is all some sort of dream?” he asked, blue eyes alight as he waited for some sort of response from her.

It wasn’t accusatory or judgy. The soft tone that came from his mouth reminded Darcy more of Steve at the end of a firefight, that low, comforting tone you use when someone’s not all there. Was _she_ not all there?

But shaking her head, she managed to croak, “I think you’re smarter than that.”

It looked like there was something he wanted to say, back to the window, hands stuffed in his pockets. Eyes never leaving hers. But noticing the clock on the far wall, Darcy realized some sleep would probably help both of them, even if she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep at all.

Prying her hand off the couch, she started, “Here, we should probably get some rest. Maybe Jane will have more news in the morning. You can take my room and—”

“No, I can take the couch.”

“Hey, I have plenty of space, don’t worry. This couch is also a bed, and I’m sure you’d prefer your privacy while you deal with the whole being in another time period thing,” Darcy assured with a tired sigh. “I know I would, and you would— you _have_ done the same, so—”

“I couldn’t—”

Crossing her arms, Darcy huffed, “I insist.”

God, this particular brand of chivalry was exhausting. Darcy didn’t even wait for his response as she walked them both to her room, opening the door for him and watching as he stared at her (miraculously) made bed. He eyed the photo of Jane, Thor and her on her nightstand, the ghost of a smile on his lips as she asked if he needed anything.

“This is more than enough. Thank you,” Bucky murmured.

And with that, Darcy nodded and let him be, closing the door so that it was only a crack open. “If you think of anything, I’m in the room across the hall, OK?”

Bucky nodded with the ghost of a smile, offering a quiet “Goodnight, Darcy.”

She couldn’t help mirror his smile, a little more worn than earlier, “Goodnight, Bucky.”

Her office was waiting for her to finish the last few steps of Jane’s demands, a thin layer of dust sitting on the desk she’d rarely sat at, brand new laptop untouched. Darcy typically wasn’t one to bring her work home with her, but there was always the option. She just felt more comfortable in a lab setting, the sounds of Jane puttering around the equipment fuelling her productivity.

“And now to work on the footage,” Darcy muttered to herself.

The easiest way would be to mark the experiment as a government contract— something boring that wouldn’t sound any alarms. That would lock the footage down to just Tony, and Jane’s 3AM lab trips weren’t exactly his idea of an easy watch. And then she’d just have to admin her way into the back end and loop some footage, so it looked natural enough and didn’t feature their new guest. 

She might have casually passed by her bedroom doorway on her way between her office and the couch, blanket trailing on the floor behind her as she peeked through the crack. Bucky was out like a light, hair spread across her pillow and highlighted by only the light of the moon.

With a twist in her gut and the sudden urge to pinch herself fading, she wandered back to the living room and settled in for the night. She didn’t even bother to toss the cushions and pull out the mattress, eyes slipping shut as the adrenaline started to fade and the exhaustion set in.

Part of her hoped to wake up and have this all be some crazy work-induced fever dream. The other wondered if this would have to be a more permanent arrangement while Jane worked out a solution. 

And if so, that little voice in her head questioned why she wasn’t entirely worried about the possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter they have to get a little sneaky and we meet another team member. See you next week!
> 
> PS: While I have you here, a quick plug for my [prompts list](https://pasmonblog.tumblr.com/post/635410523601649664) which is currently open with all sorts of fun stuff. You all know how much I love any excuse to write wintershock, but I'm open to a ton of other ships too.


	3. Chapter 3

It was hard to anticipate what the morning after having to house a time travel refugee in her Stark Tower apartment would be like. 

Sure, she’d floated through all the ways she could potentially get caught: unexpected visitors or maybe SHIELD was more knowledgeable about time travel than they’d assumed. But, had there been a list, a very short, imaginary list that caused her more heart palpitations than she was like to admit, a casual call from Tony Stark definitely wouldn’t have been on it.

Especially not immediately following her breakfast order to the kitchen.

“That’s quite the request, Lewis.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy hissed as the voice nearly her Darcy jumping out of her skin. Thankfully she caught herself, so that cup of coffee she’d been holding didn’t drip down her front.

“You binge drinking over there, Lewis? I’m practically offended. You could have invited me, you know. But maybe you don’t want me _snooping_ on your little party with a mysterious gentleman caller?”

Tony Stark was fishing for information— if he really knew anything, he wouldn’t be tip-toeing around this much.

Darcy cursed herself for not assuming the mega food order would catch his attention. It was out of the ordinary even for her most hungover mornings. But, needing to both get him back for snooping and out of her hair as quickly as possible, Darcy put on her most hurt, wobbling voice and shot back, “Wa-wait, is this because of breakfast? A-are-are you calling me _fat_?”

She could hear a pin drop on the other line, followed by a quick, sharp inhale as Tony Stark backtracked faster than cockroach when the lights turned on.

“No! _Nope_ , definitely not. I would nev— Shit, I’m sorry, Lewis. Please don’t tell Pepper. I’ll shut up now—”

 _Click_.

That, Darcy was pretty sure, was a record in getting Stark off the phone. Smiling to herself, she drummed her fingers against the countertop.

“I feel like I’m gonna ask this a lot, but what the hell was that?” Bucky Barnes croaked, ambling out of her bedroom with his hand in his hair.

He was only in his undershirt, slightly off-white and worn. But something about seeing him undone like this, hair mussed and holding back a yawn, was sort of timeless. 

“That was a very nosey person checking in. Kind of like a phone call, but without an actual phone,” Darcy replied, trying to keep it as vague as possible.

“Right,” Bucky hummed, sitting himself down at the barstool in front of her countertop. “And if I heard right, you ordered breakfast? Is it some sort of future food in packets or something?”

Darcy huffed a laugh, checking for the flash of teeth to make sure he was playing around with her like she’d assumed. Honestly, she’d been expected a whole lot more in the way of existential crises considering the circumstances. But she was starting to see that James Barnes and Steve Rogers were, in fact, cut from the same cloth, with that humour seeping through to sop up the latent fear and uncertainty.

“No,” she assured with a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure bacon and eggs are pretty familiar to you, huh?”

Bucky’s grin stretched, “Can’t say we can indulge a whole lot, but, yes, ma’am, that’s something I’m familiar with.”

Her heart skipped a beat at the _ma’am_ , and she had to snap herself out of the stare she’d settled into, locked on those ocean blue eyes across from her.

“Of course,” Darcy breathed. Mercifully, the knock at the door signalled their food delivery, so Darcy bolted out into the hall, picking up the trays placed on a cart in front of her door. Setting one of them in front of Bucky, pulling off the lid as she offered a “Bon appetite.”

Bucky was shovelling food into his mouth like he hadn’t had a proper meal in days. Her stomach dropped as it clicked that had might not have— Steve’s words about what growing up in Brooklyn was like ringing in her head. Sure, it wasn’t super soldier speed, but it wasn’t long before the momentary panic set in, and Darcy wondered whether she should have ordered more food.

Bucky cleaned his plate and looked up at her graciously. “Well, I dunno about everything else, but the future ain’t bad as far as food’s concerned.” Slumping a little in his seat, he huffed a breath before his eyes flicked back to hers, “And the company ain’t bad either.”

She tried to play off the blush rising to her cheeks with a bashful, “Bet you say that to all the time travellers.” 

But the thumping against her ribs was getting to be impossible to ignore. And it was getting harder and harder not to see those little bits of Steve in him, those little bits of Brooklyn that slipped out from beneath the Captain America veneer.

“Do you want a shower? I can probably get you some fresh clothes? You look like you’re about Clint’s size, minus a couple inches…” Darcy mused aloud, watching that light in his eyes at the tidbit of life outside her walls.

“Clint, huh? He your guy?”

Darcy snorted, sprinkling in an eye roll for good measure, “No, no. No way! Clint’s immune to my charms, but that’s probably for the best.”

Clint had always been more of a brother to her. Some days, a big brother, and others closer to a five-year-old, but he was good people.

Bucky looked a little more relieved than she thought he’d be, muttering a quiet, “Can’t imagine anyone being immune to you, doll.”

And there was that mouth again, making her lose every word that had been on the tip of her tongue a second earlier. “I uh, I’ll go steal— _borrow_ some clothes from Clint, but feel free to hop in the shower. I’ve got clean towels on the rack that you can use.”

Her mouth felt dry as she finished the sentence, trying hard to stop her mind from going towards the inevitable conclusion. That he’d have to be naked. In her apartment. _To shower_. Yeah, finding some clothes and getting out of here was probably a good idea, Darcy decided. Distance.

Distance was probably the best thing to keep her head level, all things considered.

Slinking into the common room down the hall, Darcy quickly found her mark, video game controller in his grasp. This was the picture of normalcy around the Tower in between missions; the boys were often fighting for controllers to blow off steam, especially since Clint taught Steve the ropes in Call Of Duty.

Darcy could see Clint tracking her with his eyes, flicking back and forth between her and the screen as he cursed into his headset. She quickly realized this scenario probably worked in her favour.

“Clint… I was wondering if I could borrow—”

But Clint was way ahead of her, already shaking his head as he angrily jammed the buttons on his controller. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I am not a part of whatever you’re up to.” 

“But Clint—”

“You’re a sweater thief, Darcy Lewis. Don’t give me that look. I know better. You _still_ haven’t given back the one you took last week.”

At least this part of the plan wouldn’t look out of the ordinary to anyone. If there was one thing Darcy excelled at, it was weaselling the comfiest hoodies and sweatpants out of the boys of the compound. There was nothing girlfriend-y about it; it was just a purely platonic fact that men’s clothes were way comfier.

And comforting.

Especially when the whole team was off on missions, and tumbleweeds practically blew through the Tower, which she maybe used to her benefit from time to time.

“But _Clint_.”

“Oh, don’t give me those eyes,” he groaned, throwing down the controller he had been using and rolling his own. “Fine. JARVIS, let her in.”

“Will do, Agent Barton.”

Darcy’s “Thank you!” drifted down the hall behind her as she expertly wove her way through the residential floor and into Clint’s relatively unused apartment. It was mostly a back-up when he had to be on-call for missions and didn’t want back to Brooklyn from Midtown. She quietly pulled out one of everything from his drawers, doing a quick check-in with JARVIS to ensure her protocol still held and he wasn’t about to snitch on her.

But, so far, so good.

She cased both ends of the hall before making her way back to her room, finding a still-dripping and half-covered Bucky Barnes waiting for her in the hall outside the bathroom.

Darcy had to clear her throat, physically shaking her head to try to snap herself out of this chronic staring thing she had going on. Totally unrelated to the glistening physique and specimen of a man standing in her apartment.

“Here, I grabbed a few things. Hopefully, they fit,” Darcy practically coughed out, holding her arm out as far as it would stretch and trying to stop her eyes from drifting below his. To that towel threatening to untie itself at the softest of breezes…

But Bucky, to his credit, didn’t seem to have meant to end up at the situation, pulling nervously at the towel wrapped around his waist like he was suddenly aware of how awkward this encounter was.

“Uh, thank you. I’ll get dressed,” Bucky murmured, shuffling back into her bedroom and closing the door behind him.

“And I’ll check in with Jane. Right, Jane,” Darcy muttered to herself, pacing back towards the kitchen and reaching for her phone. She tapped the screen a few times, putting it to her ear as she tapped her foot impatiently. “Pick up, pick up, pick up…”

“Yeah?”

She didn’t take the greeting personally— it was a wonder Jane answered the call at all, considering how sucked into work she usually got. _Especially_ without Darcy there.

“What’s the word?”

She could hear the brush over the microphone as Jane moved the phone around, probably checking the screen to make sure it was _actually_ Darcy on the other end of the line. With a sigh, she replied levelly, “I think you should extend your vacation. You have all of those days you were probably never going to use anyway.”

Was Jane suddenly talking in code, or was there something Darcy missed?

This definitely wasn’t what she’d consider a _vacation_.

“Are you actually telling me to take time off right now? I can’t exactly leave the Tower,” Darcy mumbled, the sentence getting sharper with every word. Lowering her voice, she added, “What happened to you figuring this out in a day or two?”

They both knew they were on borrowed time with this whole situation. The longer they kept this secret, the worse it would look when it blew up in their faces. There was only so long she could hide a real-life person in her apartment before _something _went wrong. And if Jane didn’t figure out how to get him back soon, they might have to consider contingency plans sooner rather than later.__

__And that particular option involved Jane sucking-up her raging science ego to ask Stark for help._ _

__You know, if this all went pear-shaped._ _

__“Then make it a staycation. I don’t know, Darcy. It’s going to take me at least a few days to get all the parts I need to fix this equipment.”_ _

__Darcy groaned, covering her hand eyes with her hand, “A _few days_? This isn’t like I snuck a puppy into the Tower, Jane.”_ _

__“No, you’re right. A puppy would be much easier to hide.”_ _

__And she wasn’t wrong._ _

__Darcy nibbled her lower lip, wondering if she should even ask the next question, but her mouth moved faster than her filter. “But what about the other thing. The _Cap_ thing?”_ _

__Trying to keep it to titles instead of names, Darcy was aware Bucky was probably listening in to the whole conversation. Great, that must have sounded _super_ comforting from his end. Not. She reached up to try to massage away the headache that was starting to form._ _

__“Well, he’s in DC as far as we know, and if Tony hasn’t flagged anything by now, he’s not going to go snooping on something that’s a day old already. I’m sure he’s stuck his nose into something else by now,” at this point, Jane was just rambling, probably more focussed on her next set of tests._ _

__“Jane—”_ _

__But, as if to prove Darcy’s point, Jane hurriedly added, “Anyway, got to go, things to solder, printers to take apart, bye.”_ _

__And Darcy’s ear met the dial tone, and she slumped over her kitchen counter, with no answers and no solution._ _

__“So we’re still in hiding? _I’m_ still in hiding?” Bucky muttered as Darcy turned to find him leaning just outside the doorway to her bedroom, looking way too good in a borrowed pair of sweatpants and t-shirt, drooping on his thin frame. He looked so different without the slicked-back hair and rumpled clothes— though she did kind of miss the undershirt. For reasons she was slightly ashamed of._ _

__But hey, if she was banking on the shared delusion theory—_ _

__“I get the whole time travel consequences— well, I mean, no, I don’t— but who the hell would even know me these days?” Bucky added, forehead creased in confusion._ _

__“More people than you think,” Darcy mumbled with a sigh, rubbing her face as the headache started to thrum against her skull. “I’m sorry you’re stuck with me for the next little while,” she added, voice dropping to a more apologetic tone._ _

__“S’pose there are worse places to be stuck.” He sidled back up to the barstool next to hers, eyeing her as he closed the distance between them, “I’m assuming this ain’t a common occurrence for you.”_ _

__Darcy chuckled, “No, I’m usually more of the lab type than the spy type.” She stopped and considered her words, realizing they were going to be spending a lot of time together for the next little while, and that would probably be easier if they weren’t strangers. “What about you? What do you do for work?”_ _

__Not that she didn’t already know the answer, but Darcy figured there might have been a few things left out of the history books. She _had_ always been a history buff in school, so maybe she could learn a thing or two and make their time _productive_._ _

__“I do a little work at the factory when I can get work, or down at the docks otherwise,” Bucky replied. “Anything to make ends meet, so Ma doesn’t have to work herself to the bone to feed Becca and me.”_ _

__He had a _family_ back home, back in his time. The reminder felt like a punch to her gut. That it was her and Jane’s fault he was ripped from where he came from, and now it would be days before they could get him back. Hopefully, get him back._ _

__It wasn’t even a sure thing yet._ _

__“You’re close with your family, huh?”_ _

__Bucky nodded with a sad smile, “Them and Stevie’s all I got.”_ _

__Darcy held his gaze a little too long, dropping her eyes down to the floor to hide the frustrated tears she was trying so desperately to push back._ _

__“I-I’m going to go take a quick shower if you don’t mind. And then maybe I’ll make us some more coffee,” Darcy all but croaked as she placed their trays back outside the door before adding over her shoulder, “Oh, I have some books on the shelf if you want to stay occupied.”_ _

__She wasn’t sure if it was someone being in her space or the circumstances that had her chest feeling like an elephant was sitting on it, but by the time she closed the bathroom door and flew to start the water, it was getting hard to breathe. It had been a while since Darcy had to give herself a pep talk, to set herself straight and try to drown out the intrusive thoughts bubbling to the surface._ _

__Craned over the sink and staring at her reflection, she tried to convince herself, “You’re fine. He’s fine. Jane is going to figure this out. Jane always figures it out. Except how to eat, generally keep herself alive and even stay on schedule. _Fuck_.”_ _

__Well, so much for that idea._ _

__They were doomed. Darcy was definitely doomed and would absolutely be apartment hunting by this time next week because there was no way Tony Stark would let her stay here if he knew even half of what she and Jane had been up to…_ _

___Deep breath, Darcy._ _ _

__Wrenching herself away from the bathroom mirror, Darcy’s chest heaved one last time as she wiped at her eyes. She had never been more grateful Bucky didn’t have Steve’s superhero hearing. Otherwise, he might have questioned her sanity or resolve. She just needed a good cry at the helplessness of it all, maybe even a few tears on his behalf._ _

__But with the emotions out of the way, now it was time to focus on the present. Managing to strip out of her clothes and hopping into the shower, Darcy tried to focus on the sound of the water raining down rather than the shaking in her hands or the worry rattling around in her brain._ _

__OK, so _she_ couldn’t solve this— that was in Jane’s competent hands. Tony hadn’t come knocking down her door, so hopefully, he had bigger fish to fry right now. And maybe it wasn’t super strange that she was finally taking advantage of all of those days off she’d been hoarding._ _

__Beyond all those things that were out of her hands, there was really only one person she could help right now: Bucky._ _

__So, what would she want if he was in his situation?_ _

__Sure, this whole thing had been something out of pulp fiction, but if it had been her sitting in some stranger’s apartment, in a city she didn’t know, and she couldn’t leave, what would make it slightly less painful? She couldn’t exactly have him read history textbooks (thank god she had nothing non-fiction under her roof) or the latest action or sci-fi flicks, but she did have access to time-appropriate films and featurettes._ _

__Maybe a movie marathon wouldn’t be the worst way to pass the time._ _

__And then she remembered the look on his face at breakfast, the way his eyes lit up at the full plate of food. Something in that made her realize when they’d been getting a cup of coffee in the ’40s, he hadn’t had a bite to eat, looking longingly at the baked goods in the display case._ _

__If nothing else, maybe she could put a little meat on his bones— or ruin his tastebuds forever, one or the other— but at least she could give him a _choice_._ _

__Darcy left her room, freshly changed with her wet hair falling in loose coils, to find Bucky perched on her couch reading _Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland_._ _

__“Fitting considering you kind of fell into a rabbit hole yourself, huh?”_ _

__“I recognized a few of ’em,” Bucky admitted with a smile. “But this one felt appropriate.”_ _

__If he had noticed the red rims around her eyes or the congestion in her voice, he didn’t say anything, eager to ask and answer questions back and forth while Darcy chose a movie and prepped some snacks._ _

__And so the questions started between them, with James trying to sneak future factoids out from her and them ending up on the couch watching Disney movies with a bowl of popcorn and several clean plates between them by day’s end. Darcy had been worried they’d get sick of each other, that he’d lash out in frustration or she’d ask the wrong question, but that first day in her apartment was pretty light-hearted._ _

__Just two future-past friends getting to know each other until the sun sunk out of the sky._ _

__Time seemed to pass more quickly with Bucky here, and she’d barely realized how late it was when her eyelids began to droop. Before Darcy knew what was happening, the couch dipped from underneath her, her head moved quickly to a pillow, and a blanket swept over her body under the warm glow of the TV._ _

__The last thing she remembered was fingers brushing her hair out of her face and the sound of someone’s feet padding down the hall._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Jane's on it, Tony's (hopefully) otherwise occupied and Steve's in DC. What could go wrong?
> 
> But as for next week... Remember the whole keeping Bucky a secret thing? 
> 
> Yeah, about that.
> 
> See you then!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: implied canon-typical torture.

“Buck, did you take my hairbrush?”

Three days of living together had forced the pair closer than Darcy had ever been with a man. Sure, she’d had female roommates in college, and yes, Jane and Darcy had shared the lab and the van in New Mexico. But she’d never lived with a partner—

Not that she was doing _that_ now.

No, she and Bucky weren’t partners. They were contractually obligated and basically oath sworn into this as-good-as-fictional endeavour they were backed into all thanks to Jane Foster’s last experiment. Squirrelling themselves away on Darcy’s banked vacation days to marathon movies, eat a ton of delicious food, read and even play the occasional card game.

She hadn’t exactly expected to be sharing a hairbrush with the man, who seemed to take his appearance much more seriously than she did hers. In fact, the real _vacation-y_ part of the last few days was not having to put on real pants. And that alone was almost worth the roommate situation— not that she _enjoyed_ sleeping on the couch.

But Darcy wasn’t about to complain out loud. 

Nope. Never. 

No mention of the guilty beast in her stomach that threatened to pop out every time Jane pushed back the ETA.

“It’s in the bathroom,” he called out from the kitchen, and she found it right next to a pile of bobby pins he’d found god knows where in the tiny bathroom. “Any word from the Doc?”

“Jane says it could be any day now,” Darcy called back, trying to sound confident that she believed her boss’s assurances— even if that wasn’t exactly the case. “Just waiting for the right planetary alignment or something. I’m going to go meet her for coffee in an hour to keep up appearances.”

And to make sure Jane was actually still alive, not some dehydrated and starving science robot with full-sized luggage under her eyes. Darcy had been itching to pop down to check on her since yesterday morning’s call, just to make sure.

Bucky stopped in his tracks, mid-bite into a piece of buttered toast, barely taking out of his mouth as he asked, “Any chance you can bring me back one of those—?”

“Fancy coffee drinks?” Darcy asked, finishing his sentence with a broad smile he couldn’t see. She _would_ get a 1940s man out of time hooked on sugary lattes. “You’ve got it, Barnes. Anything in particular?”

She was trying to shove her hair into some semblance of a style, waiting for his response, when two knocks sounded from her front door. 

Darcy froze in place at the sound, the brow pencil that had been on the counter clattering into the sink basin. Besides food and meal delivery and the occasional check-in from Jane, her apartment had been a veritable safe space for the past few days. 

No (modern) man’s land. 

“You expecting someone?” Bucky asked quietly, having slipped into her bedroom, eyeing her curiously.

He had a right to be suspicious, and frankly, so did she. But she couldn’t freak Bucky out, not when it could be something as simple as a package to the wrong door. 

Darcy shook her head, “I’m sure it’s a delivery requiring a signature or something. I’ll be right back.”

Her blood was pounding in her ears as she forced on a confident and reassuring smile before heading to the door. Peering through the peephole, Darcy’s heartrate skyrocketed at the blond-haired, blue-eyed man standing right outside her door with a sheepish grin.

Fuck. Wasn’t he supposed to be in DC right now?

It’s probably nothing. It’s probably nothing. It’s probably—

Darcy pried the door open with a breathless, “Hi, Steve. What brings you here?”

“Just wanted to check in, see if you were alright? Jane mentioned you were here and—”

Darcy stepped out into the hall and closed her front door behind her with a hurried, “—I uh, had a lot of vacation days left, and you know Tony won’t let us roll them over, so I decided to just make a week out of it?”

She prayed the walls were as soundproof as Tony made them out to be, because she had a feeling Bucky might be able to recognize Steve’s voice if he listened hard enough. Plus, she was also hoping Steve hadn’t heard her whispered mantra of _it’s probably nothing_ behind the door. But with the way he was surveying her, there might not have been much hope in that.

“Any big plans?” he asked, and Darcy had to catch herself from staring at the subtle crease in his eyebrow as he did.

She was _so_ screwed. That was definitely his worried Captain America face. The one where he encouraged morals, and she was supposed to confess her sins or something. 

Darcy practically creaking at every joint, frozen in a stiff smile she kept trying to liven up, “N-no. Just a couple of trashy TV marathons and catching up on my housework.”

“Well, if you need an assist or a break from the Tower, let me know.”

“You worried about me, Cap?”

“I think Doctor Foster is, a little,” Steve admitted. “I went by the lab to say hi, and she was _very_ adamant I not come to see you. Says she’d been working you to the bone and just needed some time alone to cool off.”

Darcy’s heart lodged in her throat, part guilt and part nerves at the awkward position Jane’s insistence had put her in. She cleared her throat and put on her best lilt, “So, that’s a yes? You’re worried about me?”

Maybe she could pass this off with a little ribbing, play it like banter between two friends.

“Nah, I think you know what you’re doing,” Steve assured with a soft smile. “Anyway, I should go! You _do_ work too hard.”

Darcy’s gut twisted at his response, that guilty monster rearing it’s ugly head. 

“Y-yeah, thanks, Steve. I’ll uh, I’ll get on that.” 

The truth was, she didn’t know what she was doing. None of them did. 

Maybe she should tell him. Maybe it would be the right thing to do, the thing she’d want done if it was her friend on the line. And maybe he should get one more chance to say the right thing—

“Steve!”

Before she knew what she was doing, Darcy’s mouth ran away with her, calling out to the man who was already halfway down the hall.

“Yeah?”

Steve cocked his head around, bright blue eyes staring back at her expectantly as she froze.

“Uh—” Darcy started, second-guessing herself as the fear set in and the doubt whirred through her head. Scratching her head and letting out a nervous huff of air, Darcy called back, “Thanks for checking in on me. That was uh, really sweet of you.”

And there was that smile back again. The kind you offered to people you knew weren’t telling the whole truth. It stung a little, watching that bright expectancy fizzle out right in front of her eyes, replaced with something akin to pity.

“Anytime, Darcy. You know you’re never alone here, right?”

Darcy’s breath hitched in her throat as her fists instinctively turned into fists, defensive. “Yeah, I know,” she managed to choke out. “Thanks, Steve.”

There was a second she wondered if he’d stop her. If he’d see right through her paper-thin veneer and get straight to the heart of it, but he didn’t. Steve Rogers let her walk away, probably knowing she was keeping something from him, and nothing had made her feel that bad in a long while.

But Darcy didn’t have time to brood about disappointing Captain America, almost running right into Bucky, who had been standing just outside the doorway.

“What are y—? Is that my _baseball bat_?” Darcy all but screeched, hand over her heart as she spotted Bucky eyeing her from around the corner. Still trying to catch her breath as she stared at his frozen form, she hissed, “Jesus Christ.”

“I just—” he broke off at her worried expression, dropping the bat, so it leaned against the doorframe of her room. Darcy could see him fret, hand reaching back to rub his neck awkwardly as he stared at her, “Sorry, I just worried about you. We haven’t left the apartment for anything but food, and I—”

“We’re safe here, Bucky boy. I promise no one’s going to come out of the shadows and attack you. Or me, especially me, frankly.” Considering there was a literal god on her speed-dial. “But, it’s OK, you don’t have to explain. No harm, no foul,” Darcy soothed. “I just didn’t expect you to go all macho man on me, Barnes.”

He crooked a brow in confusion.

“Uh, I guess you wouldn’t get that reference, huh? Um, territorial? Protective?” Darcy added, struggling to get her point across. “Manly?”

Bucky chuckled —was that a blush?— and replied, “Yeah, well, wasn’t none of that. I mean, well, you’re my only way of getting home, so. Can’t really have you take the count.”

It was Darcy’s turn to look confused, frowning slightly as he huffed a laugh.

“Die,” he explained with a bashful smile. 

“Right.” 

She had a purpose to him. She was the getaway car to this little interlude he’d probably forget about as soon as he stepped out of the portal Jane was concocting. 

“Didn’t think I’d get anything past you. They don’t use that phrase no more?”

“Guess not,” Darcy replied a little stiffly.

Maybe he sensed her deflation, stepping forward cautiously to close the gap between them.

“You alright there?”

Darcy forced a smile and looked up at him, now just inches from her own face, as she breathed out, “Sure. Totally fine.”

But it was hard to push back the lump in her throat at the thought of him leaving. She and Jane had been over it a dozen times by now. That they couldn’t keep Bucky here, couldn’t risk the potential long-term impacts of messing with the timeline, and that the best thing they could do is just send him back and hoped to Odin the universe righted itself.

It just… felt so unnatural.

They were so close to being done with this impromptu chapter of her life that Darcy was starting to wonder if the apartment would feel empty without him. Sure, it had only been a few days of them hiding out and movie-marathoning and practically spooning on the couch, but Darcy couldn’t ignore that twisting feeling.

Couldn’t stop trying to decode the way he looked at her, the way he hadn’t questioned anything. The way he never seemed to worry —at least, not outwardly— when she was around.

With a sigh, Darcy eyed the front door again, feeling like she could do with a bit of a walk to get rid of the leftover nerves from Steve’s visit. 

“Anyway, I should go meet Jane,” she announced, avoiding his gaze. “I’ll bring you back a drink.”

With a plan to take the long way down to the cafe, she said a polite goodbye to Bucky and made her way down.

* * *

Jane’s talk didn’t instill any further confidence. As much as she’d tried to convince Darcy she was _close_ , Darcy had heard that line from her a few too many times to put much stock in it. Bucky was waiting for her on the couch, looking like he’d been on guard since she left.

There was that pang of guilt in her gut again, along with Jane’s last words ringing through her head.

“ _He can’t stay here, Darcy. You know that. You can’t do this to yourself. It’s only going to make things harder._ ”

She numbly offered Bucky his coffee, relieved when he didn’t ask her about the progress (or lack thereof)— she’d been mulling over ways to answer him the whole way back upstairs and still walked through the door without much to go on.

“How about we finish the movie?” Bucky offered, hand softly squeezing hers.

She looked down to watch as he laced his fingers between hers, guiding them to the couch as she nodded, a little numb, “OK.”

Her other hand was a claw around her cell phone, jumping and tensing with every buzz. But every time her eyes scanned the screen and didn’t see Jane’s name lit up, she relaxed a little more against Bucky, closing her eyes and trying to memorize the moment. She imagined herself going back to it on cold nights, some stupid alternate reality where she could actually have this— _be_ this. Not just for now, but forever.

Was that pathetic of her? Maybe. But Darcy was pretty sure there was something there between them that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Of course, it would have been with the man out of time— the one she _couldn’t_ ever see again.

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

Darcy’s thoughts kept drifting back with her conversation with Steve in the hall. That worried look, that need to check in on her. She couldn’t help herself, hoping to get some sort of answer that would reassure her that she was doing the right thing by keeping this from the Captain.

“What are you going to do when you get back?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

With a breathy laugh, he shot back, “Maybe I’ll go into the picture business after all this research. Stevie’d love that, probably end up drawing the pictures himself. Those animated numbers.”

There was a beat when Darcy’s half-smile slipped, and Bucky seemed to get more serious like he was waiting for one of her witty comebacks. But Darcy could seem to come up with one, eyes dropping to the couch.

But he had a life back home, with his friends and his family. Even if it was going to be a short-lived life, and that bothered her too. Knowing that if he’d just stay here, he could avoid all of that pain and suffering. And death. Because Bucky Barnes, this Bucky Barnes underneath her, only had a few more years left.

“You going to be alright, sweetheart?”

She could hear the words _when I go_ tacked onto the end based solely on that look in his eyes, knowing he meant more than her seeming a little distracted tonight. Pasting on a convincing grin, she offered as much of a chuckle as she could manage.

“I’ll be fine. You sure I haven’t scrambled your brain with all this?”

His smile was a little more reserved. Cautious, maybe. 

“Nah, I think I’m thinkin’ clearer than I have in years, actually.”

And somehow, Darcy knew precisely what he meant. Even though he’d only been staying with her for a few days, it was getting hard to imagine the apartment without me— her life without him— when he’d brought out parts of her she hadn’t seen in years.

She didn’t realize it before he got here, but now it was hard to unsee the fact that Darcy Lewis had been at a crossroads since coming to the big city. Just barely hanging on, her only purpose had been watching Jane, feeding Jane, and generally ensuring she’d been functional enough to do what she needed to do— even if it meant 3AM experimentation with less than optimal results.

But what about Darcy? What was _her_ purpose here?

It was just before midnight when Darcy realized she hadn’t absorbed any of the last hour of _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_ , jaw locked and mind racing as she tried to puzzle out her current predicament. She pulled herself up off the couch into an overhead stretch, the cracks and pops ringing out into the room.

She stifled a yawn as Bucky watched.

“You goin’ to bed?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes.

Darcy nodded, “Yeah, just—”

“Take the bed.”

Her eyes snapped to his, narrowing as she insisted, “What? No. No, Bucky I couldn’t make you sleep on the couch—”

“Because you’re sore as all hell? I see you limping, Darcy.”

She tried to brush it off with a shrug, “It’s not a big deal—”

But Bucky didn’t take that as an answer. He grabbed her hand, pulling her towards the bedroom, and navigated her towards the bed. Darcy took one look at the bed and then back up at him, figuring it wasn’t worth any further back and forth if she could avoid it.

This would typically be the part when they said goodnights, the polite departure sentiments they’d been sharing every evening. Something inside Darcy, however, wasn’t quite willing to let him go quite yet, and that selfish part of her took hold before she could think otherwise.

“Stay?”

She hated how fragile her voice sounded, how broken and desperate. But Bucky didn’t point out any of it, quietly nodding and slipping under the covers with her.

* * *

It was the next morning when she got the text from Jane. Just a simple ‘go time’ at 3:52 AM, forcing Darcy to roll over to shake Bucky awake. But he was already up, looking up at her in the dark like he knew it was coming.

“Should I get dressed?”

“Yep,” Darcy croaked, ready to blame it on exhaustion if need be. “Jane’s waiting for us.”

He stripped right there and then, letting Darcy help him with his button-up, both trying to ignore the shaking in her hands. There was a split second when the shirt was buttoned up, and they were locked in that silence when he reached down and took her hands in his.

“I’m grateful, you know. You doin’ all this for me. Stopping your life, getting me home.”

Darcy huffed a laugh, looking away to hide the tears pooling, “Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t gotten you back yet.”

“I know you will.”

And maybe she was imagining it, but he sounded almost as sad as she felt.

“W-we should go,” Darcy stuttered out, letting her hands fall out of his grip and heading towards the door. 

She knew if they didn’t go soon, she’d lose her nerve and do something moderately more stupid than hiding a 1940s version of a war hero in her Stark Tower apartment. Bucky wasn’t far behind, hand at the small of her back as she led him back through the Tower to where this all started.

“You two took your time,” Jane shot from behind a computer monitor.

“Couldn’t exactly send him back in sweats,” Darcy groused, not quite meeting Jane’s eyes. “You ready?”

Jane nodded, “As I’ll ever be. Bucky, can you stand on the platform for me?”

He nodded, licking his lips as he considered what might be his last words in this century, “I know you can’t tell me lottery numbers or nothing, but ya got any advice for when I get back?”

Darcy gave a soft smile that Jane didn’t have time for, too immersed in the button and knobs of the machinery. Not wanting to disturb her process, nor, frankly, be chided for what she was about to say, Darcy stepped up to the platform and lowered her voice.

“Stop worrying so much about Steve,” Darcy offered quietly, as Bucky looked surprised at her. “He’ll be just fine. I promise.”

For a second, she wondered if he was going to call her on it, ask her just how she knew who he was, but then there was that glimmer. That spark she’d seen in Steve when he played dumb at others’ expense.

“Doll,” he started, soft as a whisper. “I should tell you the same.” And in one fluid movement, he pulled her towards him, against his chest and pressed a kiss into her hair, “Thank you, Darcy. I’ll miss you.”

“Darcy, step back,” Jane barked. “We’ve only got a minute.”

Head swinging back, Darcy found Jane looking at her the way she only had once before— when she and Ian had broken up last fall. She’d stood on Jane’s London flat doorstep that night, still wet from the rain as Jane swaddled her in a blanket and fed her wine and Ben and Jerry’s. Darcy started to wonder if tonight— or this morning, rather— would turn out to be another one of those nights, but Jane didn’t have time for such thoughts.

“Five seconds,” she announced, looking back at her computer screen.

There was a flicker of fear across Bucky’s face, blue eyes flicking between Darcy and Jane apprehensively before he chuckled out a, “Thanks, Doc. Hope your next experiment goes a little better.”

But Bucky Barnes was gone in a flash of light in the next second, well before Jane managed to get out her retort, “Me too.”

Darcy’s eyes took a second to adjust to the overhead lights, temporarily blinded by the flash as she watched Bucky disappear from in front of them. But she heard the clatter. The one that came from Clint Barton dropping the drink tray he’d been holding, hot coffee splattering all over the floor and the glass of the open lab door in front of him.

“What the _hell _was that?”__

* * *

_**Somewhere in DC** _

_“Darcy. Darcy Lewis.”_

_There was a jolt, a flash of light as a man writhed in a futuristic-looking chair. Every fibre of his being seemed to ignite at that moment as he cried out against his restraints. But even as the laboured breath levelled and the mouth guard was removed, that same, gravelly voice called out into the room._

_“Where is she? Darcy?”_

_The man sitting in the chair in the far corner of the room barely looked up from his paperwork as he lazily called out._

_“Wipe him again.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😬So, uh, there's a lot to unpack here. 
> 
> Feel free to screech at me in the comments. I probably deserve it.
> 
> Next week, Darcy's going to have to 'fess up... and not just to Clint.


	5. Chapter 5

Darcy was halfway to melting into the puddle of tears as Clint screeched from the lab entrance, hands flailing. It was probably the only reason she hadn’t collapsed yet, scared stiff by the hot coffee that had speckled her pant legs.

“Please tell me I just had one too many double-shots and imagined that whole thing,” Clint groaned, rubbing at his eyes after witnessing the flash of light that Bucky Barnes had disappeared into. “Because this whole thing is starting to feel like a whole lot of paperwork, and guys, paperwork is _not_ my forte.”

Jane thankfully took the lead on giving him the Cliff Notes version of the whole ordeal. Darcy watched as his expression morphed from confusion to disappointment to incredulous frustration at the pair and the risks they’d taken with the rest of the building— never mind the timeline. 

And as much as they could convince him that Tony was better off not knowing and the whole thing was as smoothed over as it was going to get, Clint Barton— that stupid mess of a human being and resident Avengers idiot —was stuck on one _goddamn_ point.

“If nobody else, you have to tell Steve.” 

Hands on his hips, sad look at the mess of coffee spattered all over the floor, he looked them both dead in the eyes and wouldn’t budge. If Darcy was honest, he was verging on toddler behaviour. 

“Seriously, guys. You can’t not tell him about this. You did the one thing he wished he could do ever since he was defrosted.”

She and Jane groaned, shaking her head as she half-scolded him, “You _know_ why we couldn’t have told him.”

“Do I now? Enlighten me,” Clint challenged, tilting his head and cocking his hip.

Yep. Definitely a toddler.

But if it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he was going to get. After all, Darcy had to do something to try to relieve herself of the guilt bubbling in the pit of her stomach at thought, and what better way than to logic herself out of all that pesky guilt.

“That Bucky didn’t know _this_ Steve, Clint. The Steve he knew was pre-serum and tiny, pre-Cap, pre-his own goddamn enlistment, even,” Darcy explained, eyes stinging as she tried to push back the emotion that made her voice warble and fray. “I couldn’t change that, Clint. I can’t just snap my fingers and fix the past. There are consequences to that kind of meddling— every action has a _re_ action and all that jazz, and we don’t know what that would have caused.”

“We don’t know what we’ve done— what effect we might have already had on the past _or_ present,” Jane added, somewhat unhelpfully as Darcy struggled to breathe.

Maybe it looked weird, Darcy standing here with way too many emotions to process, trying to tell someone why she wasn’t an awful person for hiding the truth. Even if it went against everything inside her that wanted to be honest, good, and generally well-liked… And definitely not the harbinger of the end of the world or anything. But Darcy was having a hard time staying upright as she took gulps of air, her legs threatening to buckle out from under her. 

Clint reached out to steady her with one strong arm and a very concerned look.

“Hey, hey. Are you OK?” Clint asked in a hushed tone, anger long gone as he scrutinized her. 

And as much as Darcy wanted just to melt into his hold and let out the frustrated tears that were building on her waterline, she scrunched her face and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I-I’m fine,” Darcy managed to hiss out in between unsteady breaths.

Clint was silent for a moment, letting her find her balance before murmuring the follow-up. “I’ve known you since New Mexico. I saw you after London. I know that look, Darcy. You don’t have to be OK.”

Darcy offered him a curt nod but nothing else, not wanting to open her mouth in case she couldn’t control what toppled out.

Jane didn’t seem to catch wind of Clint’s ask, brain still full steam ahead on the logistics of the whole thing. Darcy was almost relieved that she was taking the spotlight off her for the moment. 

“It should have worked,” Jane mumbled to herself as she flipped through a stack of papers clipped onto a board. 

As depressing (and confusing) as this whole ordeal was, Darcy at least couldn’t feel Clint burning a hole into the side of her face with his eyes as his eyes flicked up to watch Jane instead. 

“What went wrong?” Clint asked, knowing better than to try to sneak a look at the results himself.

Jane eyed him between page flips, murmuring as she scanned the paper, “The best I could come up with was there was some sort of temporal disturbance that I should have accounted for in my output. But it’s doubtful I could have even found it, honestly…”

Clint nodded, not that Jane would have even noticed over her train of thought. The piteous look he offered Darcy disappearing with his attention now firmly on the matter at hand.

“I get it— well, I mean, not the science stuff, but the rest of it,” Clint affirmed after a few quiet moments. “But you should still tell him. _Both_ of them, actually. You know Tony’s going to find out one way or another anyway.”

Clint’s attention drifted to Darcy. ‘ _And I’m worried about you_.’ She could hear the unspoken next sentence without him saying it out loud. 

She, too, knew that look. 

In return, Darcy offered him a watery smile and shook her head, brushing off the worry but not the request. “I’m going to DC next week. I’ll work up the courage and tell Steve then…”

But, little did Darcy know, her travel plans were about to change.

* * *

Just when the trio thought their week couldn’t get any weirder, they got word from DC.

It just wasn’t exactly the kind they’d been expecting.

“Steve Rogers is a criminal?”

The words felt so hollow in her mouth but rung out in Tony Stark’s office as they stared at a projection of the news footage. Tony had called any of the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent crew into his office for an impromptu meeting. Still, with so many people off-site— Natasha in DC, Bruce god knew where, and Thor off-world —it really just ended up being the four of them and Pepper.

“I think the technical title is fugitive?” Tony offered, sounding a little too bored at the prospect.

But the situation was developing so quickly, it was hard to parse truth from fiction. None of the people in the room particularly trusted SHIELD, to begin with, and now…

“ _Our_ Steve Rogers? Captain America?” Clint offered, face screwed up worse than when she told him she’d tased Thor in a shitty bar in the middle of the desert.

And trust her, that was _quite_ the conversation.

For once in his life, Tony kept it brief, “SHIELD’s after him. Named him a target. It’s like OJ all over again with all this coverage.”

“ _SHIELD_ SHIELD?” Darcy asked, still stuck on the matter at hand.

Tony nodded, taking a sip of a drink that most people probably would have waited until noon for. “Sorry, kid, but I think your little trip’s going to have to wait until we can get a hold of the situation.”

* * *

They didn’t have to wait long for word. It seemed there was a micro-update every hour, not from the news sites, but from FRIDAY, combing the internet and internal SHIELD chatter Tony had managed to skim months ago. By the next morning, the Triskelion was in pieces and Darcy, Tony, and Clint were on a QuinJet to DC, having finally heard from Natasha, who was stationed at a local hospital. 

She didn’t say much else— it seemed she didn’t even trust the secure SI lines for whatever state secrets she had to tell them.

And since Jane had to babysit her remaining experiments, Darcy was a lone ball of nerves, going back and forth about whether she’d actually be able to go through with it. You know, admitting to Steve that they had managed to accidentally bring back his childhood friend from the middle of 1940s Brooklyn. It probably wasn’t the right time, what with being a declared an enemy of the state just twenty-four hours prior.

But as soon as they stepped foot in his hospital room, seeing a bruised and bloodied Steve Rogers lying in a hospital bed like some mere mortal, Darcy could tell from the look on his face that this was worse than she could have imagined.

Clint took a seat in the corner of the room, having been a total statue the whole ride over. It wasn’t that unusual— to Tony, he was just playing pilot for the day— but Darcy wondered if he was punishing her or just not trying to give Tony a headstart on her confession. Whatever it was, it unnerved the hell out of her.

But the words that broke the silence seemed to suck all the air out of the room.

“Bucky, I saw Bucky.”

Those four simple words were seemingly ripped right from her own mouth, said instead by the rasping man in the hospital bed in front of her. Clint sat forward in his chair, eyes darting between Darcy and Steve.

“What?” she asked breathlessly. She reached out to steady herself on the foot of the bed frame, her vision tunnelling so much that Steve’s face was the only thing she could see.

Tony mirrored the response, though he was a little less tactful about the addition, “How hard did you hit your head exactly?”

Natasha stepped forward, her voice strong and certain, “He’s alive. Steve saw him. I’ll vouch for that.”

“ _How_?” Darcy couldn’t think of any other word to offer at that moment, brain whirring as she tried to pin this on herself.

Was this some sort of butterfly effect bullshit? Did she cause this? Was this her penance for having played with science and lost?

“Bucky was there, in the Triskelion. They had him for decades,” Steve managed to croak out, voice rough. “There were deaths, all done by the same killer. All hired by the same people. SHIELD— _Hydra_ was using him as a weapon. He was— _is_ the Winter Soldier.”

It felt like the weight of the world had dropped to the pit of her stomach. Bucky, _her_ Bucky— Steve’s Bucky was gone. And in his place, an empty shell that Hydra had gotten their filthy hands on. White knuckles gripped the foot of Steve’s hospital bed, clutching on for dear life as Steve stared at her. She could feel Natasha’s eyes burning holes into her, trying to figure out just what her issue was.

Darcy knew this wasn’t a normal reaction; she knew she was giving herself away. But Darcy couldn’t help but feel like she was in a fucking nightmare, just desperate to wake up.

“Darcy?”

This was more of a gasp and low, breathy wow situation, staring off into the corner of the room as Steve explained the significance. She shouldn’t know Bucky, not beyond any factoids printed in a standard high school history textbook, but here she was, wondering if she had been the cause of this all. All because she didn’t tell Jane not to fuck with the space-time continuum.

And boy, did it hurt.

But not as much as it was about to.

“I have to tell you something,” Darcy said shakily, trying to gather her breath again. “About Bucky. About Jane. And potentially about time travel.”

The whole room went dead silent for a second, the only sounds the trills and beeps of the machinery Steve was hooked up to.

“Time travel?” Steve parroted back to her skeptically, forehead creased. 

Darcy wasn’t sure if Steve thought she wasting his time or if he knew this was what she’d kept from him. But either way, it was the closest she’d ever seen to anger on his face.

“Tell us what you know,” Natasha said a little gentler, sitting Darcy onto the bed and shooting Steve a look as she settled down beside her.

“About a week ago, Jane was running an experiment in the lab—” and suddenly Tony was interested, looking up from his phone as he stared at Darcy like some sort of prey “—and we somehow ended up in Brooklyn. In the 1940s.”

“And you saw him?” Steve breathed, and all the anger suddenly faded, replaced with this strange sense of hope, if Darcy didn’t know any better.

She cleared her throat, “He uh, he offered to help us. Jane couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her equipment, and we were lost, and we just happened to run into him…” she was rambling now, she realized, belabouring the real admittance. “Long story short, Jane knocked some sense into the remote, and we got back. With Bucky.”

“ _What?_ ”

It was Tony’s voice, not Steve’s, that rang out in the room, looking like Pepper had just told him all his suits had been destroyed. 

“Let her talk, Stark,” Clint said gently, giving him a warning look.

Steve looked to be at a loss for words, staring between Tony, Clint and Darcy like he was trying to figure out just what to believe.

“Is he still there? At the Tower?” Natasha chimed in, face clear as a slate, hand still gently placed atop Darcy’s knee.

She shook her head, “No, we got him back a couple days ago.”

“There was a walking, talking _Smithsonian exhibit_ in my Tower, and you didn’t think to tell me?”

OK, Tony was livid now, with this being the rawest emotion she’d seen on his face since the whole Incident thing.

“I mean— I did— _think_ about it,” Darcy mumbled, fidgeting with the blanket on top of Steve’s bed. “But Jane said no, and you gave me that carte blanche protocol, and I didn’t think it would be like five days of hiding out—”

“ _Five_ days?” 

Oh boy, Darcy was about to leave DC jobless _and_ homeless at this rate. She could just feel it as she watched Tony devolve into anxious pacing around the room. And she was sure there was about to be an irate phone call placed at the end of this conversation to a very exhausted Jane Foster. 

Tony wasn’t done, eyes still narrowed as he turned to Clint, “You knew, didn’t you, Barton?”

“I only found out at the end— _accidentally_ ,” Clint added, shooting Darcy a look. “Figured Steve should be the first to know, all things considered.”

But Steve was suspiciously quiet, looking like he wasn’t entirely taking in the argument happening around them. Darcy laid a hand on Steve’s blanket-clad leg, offering a sad smile as he looked at her.

“He told me about you two,” Darcy breathed, not wanting to fan the fire that was Tony Stark’s frustration. “You and Becca were all he could talk about.”

Darcy could see the tears in his eyes, “It was really him? You’re sure?”

She nodded, scrambling for her phone and flipping through her security app to pull up the footage she’d tucked away from Tony. Darcy zoomed in on a frame of Bucky standing in the middle of her living room, laughing, his smile extending from ear to ear, before handing it to Steve. His eyes widened in shock.

“That’s him,” he breathed. “That’s how he used to be…”

The bottom seemed to drop out from beneath Darcy, and she was struggling to hang onto firm ground, searching for anything that would make this OK and less weird than it was quickly becoming. But all the half-formed thoughts tried to sputter out at once, the guilt releasing the floodgates as Steve stared at her phone in wonder.

“I’m sorry if this is somehow my fault. I’m sorry I hid this from all of you guys. We were so scared about the impact. But if we fucked with the timeline and this is all secretly our fault—”

“No,” Steve said definitively, cutting off Tony, who still looked like he was about to explode. “No, they’ve had him a long time. Since he fell off the train, since I thought he was—“

 _Dead_. He should have been long dead by now.

Steve’s sentence ground a halt, ending in a silent understanding between the two of them, both bleary-eyed and resolute.

“We have to find him.”

Darcy didn’t know where the confident tone in her voice came from. She didn’t know how she mustered up the strength to even say that in front of Steve, who looked so broken and sad and alone. She’d never seen him like this, vulnerable and tearful, but she knew why— she knew _exactly_ why he was. 

Because she’d met Bucky Barnes, only known him for five days, and her heart still hurt at the knowledge he had been brainwashed and used by an organization she used to be employed by.

Also ransacked by, but she’d keep holding that over Clint’s head for at least a few more years.

Tony, who looked like he’d been holding onto his piece for too long, looked exasperated. Worn down. Like the reality of the situation — of Steve and Natasha and the good half of what they’d known as SHIELD revealed as a cover — finally set in.

“Even if you do manage to find the guy,” Tony sighed, rubbing his forehead hard enough to smooth the creases there. “We don’t even know if he’ll remember you, Darcy. Time travel isn’t exactly familiar territory. Even to _me_.” 

“But this isn’t for me. I’m not doing this for me,” Darcy asserted with a shake of her head. Well, maybe it was, just a little, to assuage her guilt at sending him to his (apparently almost) death. “This is for Bucky.”

“We’re going to find him, Darcy,” Steve assured, clasping her hand and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “We’ll get him back.”

Darcy wasn’t sure if he saw something in her, that part of her that she had been trying to hide since Clint asked too many questions in the Tower. But she nodded back at him numbly, grateful when the rest of the room agreed with him and offered their help.

Natasha piped up again, “Speaking of, they should probably meet Sam, huh?”

“The guy with the wings?” Tony asked, suddenly interested again, having spent most of the ride over having JARVIS walk him through the available footage from DC.

“Yeah, bring him in, Nat,” Steve urged, struggling to sit up in his bed.

Clint was by his side in a second, helping to adjust the pillows and blankets as he straightened out. Darcy, however, had her eyes on the door, watching as Natasha led a slightly bruised dark-skinned man into the hospital room while murmuring in his ear.

“So you’re the one, huh?” Tony mused, watching as the man gave a bashful chuckle and showed off the gap in his front teeth. “Experimental military tech, yeah? I think I have those specs somewhere. JARVIS, do I have those specs somewhere?” Tony asked into his phone, waiting for an answer.

“ _Yes, sir. Based on the footage we’ve acquired, you do indeed have those plans from the last time you scraped information from the Pentagon._ ”

“Put that on my to-do list, J. I feel some tinkering coming on for our new friend here.” With one look, Tony offered a, “Anyway, nice to meet you. Thanks for saving Cap’s ass,” to Sam before scurrying out into the hall, still talking to his phone.

Sam’s eyes were as big saucers as he looked around the room as if expecting the rest of them to be surprised by Tony Stark being there in the flesh, the appearance of Tony’s AI, or maybe even just the admittance that he’d scraped technical data from the Pentagon. 

Either way, Sam looked a little ruffled when he realized no one batted an eyelash at the exchange.

“I’m uh, Sam Wilson, by the way,” he offered to the room as he cleared his throat. His eyes wandered after Tony into the hallway, “He always this intense?”

Darcy snorted, “Always. I’m Darcy Lewis, Stark Industries science wrangler extraordinaire. And that’s Clint—”

“Hawkeye, right? Man, damn impressive shots.”

Clint let out a breathy chuckle as he stood up to shake Sam’s hand, “Thanks, man.”

“Alright, bird boys. You can fluff each other’s feathers once everyone’s briefed. If we’re going to do this, we have to do this the right way,” Natasha cut in, getting down to business.

But Sam still looked a little confused, forehead wrinkling as he stared at her, “So what exactly are we doing?”

“Finding the Winter Soldier and convincing him to come home before Hydra can get their hands on him again,” Steve offered before his eyes landed on Darcy again. “With a little time travel hiccup to factor in.”

“Time travel,” Sam breathed, looking at Steve like he was waiting for the punchline. “Right… Is that all?”

Clint snorted, “Piece of cake.”

But the way Steve looked at Darcy, with assurance missing behind his blue eyes as he gave her a nod, she knew this wasn’t going to wrap itself up next week, or next month, or even next year. Not with Hydra training and governments after Avengers and all the headaches that came with international borders.

No, this was not going to be easy, but they didn’t have much of a choice.

They had to get Bucky Barnes (or whatever was left of him) home.

Whether or not he was any of the man Darcy and Steve used to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Steve and the rest of the team knows now. They'll find a lead quick... right?
> 
> See you next week!


	6. Chapter 6

Between Tony giving Jane an earful and Steve having to break the awful news that Tony’s parents had been among the victims of the Winter Soldier (only _one_ lab had been destroyed in the process), the weeks that followed were definitely more what even Darcy considered chaotic. It had taken the team a few days and a lot of breathing room to get him back on board, understandably, with one very patient therapist finally managing to get through to Tony. 

But now that things were back on track, it seemed like everyone was firing on all cylinders. Any day she wasn’t stuck in recap meetings with the larger team, her own social media monitoring for any sign of Bucky, or in therapy, turned into a haze of back-and-forths between Jane and Tony— which made it hard to get a word in edge-wise.

“OK, so walk me through it again.”

It wasn’t like they hadn’t been over the whole scenario, piece by piece, at least a dozen times already. But Tony wasn’t about to let Jane forget just how in over their heads they’d been, pacing across the lab like he owned the place.

Which, yeah, technically he _did_ …

Jane sighed, eyebrows at her hairline as she gestured towards the projections Tony was scrutinizing. “As you can _see_ , we set up the scenario, tested a few different variables. But the basis of the inter-dimensional communication with Asgard used some of the readings from Loki’s staff to inform some sort of connection with space—”

“No wonder,” Tony scoffed disapprovingly, and Darcy was almost surprised it had taken him nearly two whole sentences to interject. “Using the powers of space is dangerous— never mind a _weapon of mass destruction_. One that a literal demi-god was using to rip a hole in our reality. How could you have thought that was a good idea?!”

But Jane wasn’t about to give him an inch, arms crossed and jaw squared as she stared at him point-blank. “It was a calculated risk.”

“ _Mis_ calculated, I’d bet. You don’t even know whose powers you were actually messing with,” Tony shot back, looking a little too smug as he fiddled with nearby buttons and knobs, and Jane got progressively more red-faced. “You could have ended up in the Middle Ages, burned at the stake for being a witch.”

“It was _one_ temporal anomaly that I don’t even know if I could have accounted for in the first place—”

Darcy had had enough of the whole thing, already rubbing her temples to try to soothe the impending migraine before she jumped in, “Listen. What’s done is done. The only other thing we could do from where would be just trying the replicate the whole thing—”

She was just about to clarify that would have been a _terrible_ idea, but Tony beat her to the punch with a snort.

“Yeah, don’t even think about trying that again. Not without at least three more fail-safes and my direct oversight. Jesus Christ. How the hell did this get past me? JARVIS?”

“ _Apologies, Sir._ ”

Jane slumped back into her chair, angrily muttering at the paperwork she was scratching at with a ballpoint pen as Tony stormed out of the lab. She’d say this was an anomaly too, but she’d seen this particular conversation play out three times already in the last week, with none of them coming closer to an answer.

How they’d gotten there and why being the main ones.

But if Darcy was honest, she was more concerned about the conversations she _wasn’t_ privy to. The ones in back rooms with Steve, Sam, Natasha and even Tony, trying to pinpoint precisely where Bucky would have escaped to. She’d snuck looks at surveillance footage, glances at reports from the CIA and Interpol, but nothing concrete yet.

And Darcy Lewis was starting to get impatient.

* * *

“Darcy? Where are you off to?”

Steve Rogers sounded almost exasperated as he looked the brunette up and down, eyes lingering at the luggage in her grasp— a single carry-on that had been sitting packed in her apartment for weeks now. It was the rattiest luggage she owned, scuffed and worn and probably still speckled with New Mexico earth.

“Any word?” Darcy asked, ignoring the question with a raise of her brows. 

Steve knew exactly what she was asking for and quickly shook his head, not needing or unwilling to say as much out loud. But Darcy had already known the answer, locking her jaw as she put on her most assertive tone.

“Then, you know the deal. I’m going to Europe.”

Six months. Darcy had given Steve, Sam and the team six months to come up with something on Bucky’s whereabouts before taking things into her own hands. 

And so, it had been six months of Steve and Sam doing it their way: Intel, sources, surveillance, follow-ups on leads that seemed a little too good to be true. And in just four, they’d gone from nearly daily meet-ups and tète-a-têtes to weekly almost-guilty passing glances in the halls. Sam ended up flying out on the team’s behalf for some on-the-ground recon but came up empty (“ _It ain’t exactly a vacation, but I’ve put on more frequent flyer miles in the last six months than the rest of my life combined._ ”). And while everyone was outwardly optimistic— or at least, not doomsday prepping —Darcy knew better. 

She knew Steve was at a loss, and Natasha, for once, didn’t have any more answers or ideas.

At this point, they were basically the waiting game. And the problem with the waiting game was that it was antiquated, impersonal and took way too fucking long for Darcy’s Lewis’s liking. 

Every morning she woke up to an empty apartment was a reminder, a stab in the gut that she’d sent the nice, well-meaning Bucky Barnes of the past back to go through decades of torture at the hands of Hydra. Every night she had a harder and harder time falling asleep, wondering just what _he_ was going through— the hiding and the confusion and the fact that most of the intelligence agencies on earth were hunting him.

And sure, while that wasn’t exactly entirely her fault, it didn’t lessen the guilt.

“You leaving today…? Already?” Steve asked, rubbing the back of his neck like he was searching for some reason for her to stay.

But Darcy was one of those people who couldn’t just _wait_. There was no sitting on her hands or placing her trust in a system that was so broken even the Avengers didn’t know up from down. No, she was much more interested in getting boots on the ground, even if they were hers.

And so, against all advice and pleas, Darcy took a risk— a _big_ risk— and booked a flight to Europe— Prague to be specific, carefully plotting out an Eastern European itinerary since it was the only lead the team had gotten in all their time investigation.

Darcy shrugged, “It’s the only thing left to do, Steve.”

She tucked away the ‘sorry’ at the tip of her tongue, refusing to apologize for trying. If she stayed here any longer, Darcy was going to wear a hole in the carpet with all the pacing and nail-biting. She’d wear a hole in her gut from the nervous acid eating away at her stomach lining, wondering if he was even still out there.

If Hydra hadn’t gotten to him first.

“There’s no way I can convince you to stay, huh?”

Darcy didn’t miss the sad smile on Steve’s face as she shook her head, “I appreciate you trying. I do. But I can’t stay in this Tower anymore.”

Steve lay a heavy hand on her shoulder, squeezing slightly as he rumbled, “I know. Just— be safe, Darcy.”

“I will,” Darcy whispered, eyes dropping down to the floor, far away from the blues that reminded her of his other half. “I’ll check in the way you taught me. Secure servers, burner phones and all,” she added with a shake of a shitty-looking black flip phone. The uglier, the better, she was told. 

And once she landed, she’d be able to pick up a few back-ups at the airport, just in case.

Steve turned back to her one last time as if the thought had just occurred to him, “If anything happens—”

“You’ll be the first to know, Steve. I promise,” Darcy assured, reaching up to squeeze his hand with hers. “You be safe too, OK?”

With a wry smile and a huff of a laugh, Steve offered a joking, “Yes, ma’am.”

Darcy caught a cab just outside the Tower, bracing for the long drive to JFK in rush-hour traffic. A red-eye wasn’t exactly her preferred way to travel, but with enough drinks in her system courtesy of one of the many airport lounges Stark Industries would end up paying for ( _thank you expense account_ ), she was hoping to sleep through most of it.

Settling down in the economy seat she’d reserved the night before, Darcy pulled out the only book she’d bought with her, untangling her iPod earbuds from around the paperback. But unable to keep her eyes open for very long, _Alice In Wonderland_ slipped from her grip and into her lap just an hour later.

* * *

“Reason for your visit?”

“Vacation.”

Stamp, passport, ‘ _next!_ ’

Darcy rolled her carry-on out of immigration before following the taxi signs overhead. Watching as the buildings flew by on their drive into the city, she wonder off-hand just how many of them were older than the United States. Probably more than she could see in the three days she was here.

Then it was Budapest to Český Krumlov, Kraków and Auschwitz, Vienna… 

There were a few more trips Darcy could tack onto the end if she needed to —if she hadn’t lost hope by then— but Darcy hoped against hope that she wouldn’t have to make it to the end of her list. If the universe wasn’t as cruel as she’d always assumed it was, maybe she’d find what she was looking for.

 _Who_ she was looking for.

Because as much as Darcy was fine playing a typical tourist in the grand scheme of things, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t eye every alley, lingering in the parts of the cities most Americans wouldn’t touch. It wasn’t the worst role she’d ever had to play with a plan. It sure beat getaway driver. But even so, Darcy wasn’t kidding herself. She knew she was out of her league with this one.

Maybe even out of her mind.

Sure, maybe she should have chopped her hair like Natasha recommended. A _real_ disguise with a well-placed wig and maybe even an accent. But espionage was never her strong suit, if London wasn’t proof enough of that. 

Plus, as far as Darcy knew, she wasn’t under surveillance. She wasn’t a target like Steve and Sam were, which was one of the few points working in her favour. As far as _anyone_ knew, she was just Darcy Lewis, recent-ish college graduate, spending a few months abroad before starting a full-time big girl job in the fall.

But the worst part, maybe even the saddest part of this whole thing, was that the biggest fear pooling in the pit of her belly was whether or not he’d even recognize her. Whether she’d been stripped from his memory just like Steve had been. 

Whether any part of the Winter Soldier was the Bucky Barnes she’d known from 1940.

The sun was still shining as Darcy yawned, paying her cabbie and heading into the hostel she’d booked months back. She made polite small talk with the people at the front desk before dropping off her luggage and taking a stroll.

She had tickets to an opera that first night, a little treat for finally using her passport for something that wasn’t entirely work-related. She went to Old Town Square, took a tour at Prague Castle, saw more churches in two days than she had her whole life. She ate Palačinky and drank way too much wine, hobbling back to the hostel in the wee hours of the morning.

By all accounts, Darcy was having a blast. A regular world-traveller taking in the sights and sounds. But she was on alert all day, eyes sweeping every crowd, every view, even nook and cranny for an inkling of him. As much as she kept to her front, put on airs, Darcy Lewis was anything but on vacation.

A few days in, and it already felt like she’d worn herself out, not remembering her head hitting her pillow most nights. Some nights, sleeping more soundly than she had in years. Maybe it was the travel taking it out of her.

But part of her hoped it was because she was close.

Prague was pretty— gorgeous, even. Darcy would give it that, but besides the sights and attractions (and maybe the food), the trip itself was pretty fruitless. She’d left a few messages on the server Natasha had set up for them before she left, which was more for Jane’s peace of mind than any of the spies’— maybe Steve’s too if she thought about it.

But they hadn’t had any luck or leads lately either.

So Darcy was back to the airport, as scheduled, a few days later, tossing a burner phone into a nearby trash can after a quick check-in to the team back home. Dreading the international ‘I told you so’ probably brewing in Steve’s system as she logged back in for one last flight confirmation upload.

It wasn’t like she was _really_ expecting the first location, or even the second or third, to pan out. But it could have. And that was enough reason for her to keep going and not take their pleas to come back home to heart.

That little flicker of hope, that tiny hint of familiarity that seemed to grow in the pit of her belly was the only thing spurring her on as she hopped on a flight to Budapest. 

And then a few days after that to the Czech Republic. 

And another to Poland, four days after that.

No matter how hard she tried, how thoroughly she looked, Darcy started to think she was looking for someone who didn’t want to be found.

It _wasn’t_ all smooth sailing— never is with travel.

There were a couple moments that stuck out to her along the way, things that made her wonder. There was that failed pick-up artist in Olomouc, but Darcy was too busing casing the city square from her bistro table, too engrossed in people watching to care about some guy’s not-so-smooth lines. There was that time in Wrocław when Darcy thought she was being followed, but she’d chalked it up to paranoia and being far from home.

But mostly, it felt like a bunch of hollow attempts to enjoy herself strung together like an actual vacation and not the desperate manhunt it really was.

It wasn’t until Darcy stepped foot into the cobblestone streets of Vienna that she lost that sense of excitement, the fear and the nervous energy that had followed her across the continent. Sure, there were places she could go to after if this didn’t pan out. There were flights and accommodations that had yet to be booked or confirmed. 

But Darcy couldn’t help but wonder, weeks now into this stupid little experiment of hers: was it worth it?

In fact, she was starting to wonder just how long she could run around and pretend that she was doing something more productive than fretting in front of computer screens back home. And maybe that was why Darcy was distracted outside of her hostel, not noticing the two men approaching her from either side in the dark as her cab pulled away, and she tried to dig through her purse. 

The heavy footsteps, not bothering to hide their intentions, fell on deaf ears. Darcy didn’t even see the glint of a blade in the dim lamp post lighting, with her head down and hand digging through her bag for the hardcopy booking confirmation.

But Darcy did notice when another joined the fray— the one who seemed to tower over the other two and who moved more silently than she could have ever expected. It was like he’d materialized from the shadows themselves, cutting between Darcy and the man with his arm outstretched towards Darcy, just inches away from grabbing her forearm.

The rest seemed to happen in a flash. All she saw was the long, dark hair swinging in front of his face, falling out from under a ball cap. And all she could do was stare as he grabbed the man nearest her by the hair and promptly bashed his face against a nearby brick wall. There was a roar as he disposed of him, throwing the attacker to the ground with one effortless snap of his arm. 

Darcy’s eyes darting to the last one of the two standing, not knowing whether she could trust anyone after that. 

“Shit, shit. Why didn’t I bring my taser?” Darcy hissed, turning to bolt out of the alley and into the open street, but she didn’t quite make it.

The straggler quickly caught up behind her. And she yelped as she felt fingers wrap themselves around both her shoulders, pulling her back up against the brick alley wall. All the air seemed to drain from her lungs. 

_Escape or disarm_. The words rang out in Darcy’s head from years of Natasha and Clint drilling it in there, to begin with. If she got cornered, she was supposed to disarm, throat or dick punch and then run like hell. 

But all sense of confidence went right out the window as Darcy’s that hulking shadowy figure just over the shoulder of her attacker.

Stuck in between two unknowns, she tried to press herself further against the wall, knowing better than approaching either of them head-on. The one at the exit had other plans, lunging for the man who had her in his grip, taking him down to the ground in a flash before Darcy could even get a good look at him.

“Hey!” Darcy called out against every single cell in her body that was urging her to run. “Who _are_ you?”

And yes, Darcy realized that question was probably fruitless in a non-English-as-a-first-language country, but she couldn’t help herself. A mop of brown hair, a little less scary looking in this light, snapped to her, and she nearly gasped. 

She _knew_ those eyes. That hair. That face. That metal hand glinting in the dim light.

 _Bucky_.

Maybe that’s why Darcy Lewis didn’t run as the figure closed the gap between them, as she nervously eyed the two men on the ground, motionless. She off-handedly wondered if they were already dead.

Those blue eyes, once warm like the ocean, were the coldest she’d ever seen. Icy and almost grey as they assessed her like a slab of meat. She froze as she felt his breath on her neck, staring up at him through her eyelashes, half expecting to get pulled by the hair herself. But he was perfectly still, eyes drifting across her body in the dim light.

Bracing for impact, she tried to calculate her odds— not that she was ever good at math.

For all she knew, his brain was glitching, and she was going to end up on the wrong side of that very metal arm. The panicked thoughts ran through her head on parade: Did he think she was a threat? That she was Hydra and was trying to take him back? 

Did he realize somewhere deep, down in that manipulated mind of his, that he knew her?

The Winter Soldier didn’t really seem to be an ‘ask questions, take informed action’ kind of guy, and suddenly Darcy felt like she was going to be sick. Her stomach gurgled in anxious anticipation.

The only thing she could hear above the street sounds, the vague sirens approaching in the background, was a lower, gravelly version of the voice she’d spent hours talking to in a different country— a different time.

“I know you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, yeah? That wasn't so bad... right? 
> 
> Feel free to place your bets on their conversation (or lack thereof) in the comments.
> 
> Next week: Darcy stays true to her word. See you then!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I just wanted to leave a little love note of my own for everyone who’s been interacting with and reading this story. I want you all to know every comment, kudos and bookmark means the world to this little author. Your support fuels me writing more long-form pieces like this one.
> 
> I’m always a little hesitant to start longfics, but you all are the best!! Thank you so much.
> 
> Now, back to the story (and the longest chapter in the series).

Darcy stared at the man in front of her, trying to understand whether she’d heard him correctly. 

Because there was absolutely _no way_ she’d heard him correctly.

She took in the long, stringy brown hair peeking out from under his hat—the flash of silver between the cuff of his jacket and a leather glove on his left hand. The circles under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks gave him that on-the-run look she’d seen before on other men. This close, she could spot the blood on his collar— probably not his.

But his eyes, those cold blues, _ice_ cold still, were staring back at her as he repeated himself with more conviction, this time, “I _know_ you.”

Pushing back the tears building, Darcy tried to straighten out her slack jaw and put on an authoritative tone as her eyes darted nervously to their less than conspicuous setting. The unconscious forms still lumped onto the concrete, barely visible in the setting sun’s light. The cars on the streets at either end of the alley. The people that could walk in on them at any moment.

“Well, _I_ know that we can’t stay out here on the street. It’s not safe. I have a room inside, if—” Darcy hesitated, weighing the risks of inviting him upstairs while trying to keep up her brave facade.

Truth was, she didn’t know this Bucky Barnes— didn’t know if he _was_ Bucky Barnes or if this was some sort of human-like failsafe programming Hydra had slipped into their brainwashing. Could she trust him, or was he just going to get rid of the last witness once the door closed behind them? Sure, he had just saved her— she didn’t know exactly _why_ , but that had to count for something.

Right?

But he didn’t seem to show any hesitation, eyes locked to hers as those two words came out of his mouth.

“Show me.”

His voice was far from the smooth, crooning Brooklyn accent she could have listened to for hours. It was time and weather-worn, gruff and rumbling in his chest. 

But still, it was somehow familiar enough for Darcy to nod and turn back towards where she should have ended up in the first place, before the attack. She fought her own instinct to grab his hand and leading him. Contact probably wasn’t a good idea— not after all those dealing with PTSD workshops Sam had treated her to before she left for Europe.

Neither of them had taken the process entirely seriously, both doubtful she would have ended up in this situation, and Sam probably assuming it was something akin to therapy for her, but here she was anyway. Against all odds. Somehow in possession of the man they’d been trying to get a hold of for months.

Or, well, _he_ was in possession of _her_.

Darcy was well aware of the power imbalance here, if the metal arm wasn’t enough to go off of, but didn’t want to ring the alarm yet. Everything inside Darcy was telling her not to call Steve yet. Not if she wasn’t in trouble, not if he hadn’t proved himself a threat. Not without talking to Bucky first.

Not when he was telling her some part of him remembered her. Somehow.

God, she’d spent so long convincing herself it wasn’t possible, that it went against every law of science and quite a few theories devised by people much smarter than her. But here they were, Bucky following a few paces behind her, a hulking shadow, as she led them back into the building. 

Darcy tried hard not to drop her keys to the room as her shaking hands tried to get the door unlocked as quickly as possible. But before she could step a foot into the room, she was being pulled out of the doorway by a solid arm, fighting hard not to cry out as Bucky placed her further into the hall.

“Sweep,” he groused, slinking into the room. “Stay there.”

Darcy was frozen in his wake, clung to the door frame and peeking into the room. She watched as he hugged the walls, flicking on the lights in the bathroom. He peered under every piece of furniture, and she could even hear him pull back even the shower curtain before returning to the door and looking blankly at her.

“Clear.”

Nodding numbly, Darcy wobbled into her hostel room, quickly locking the door behind her and collapsing onto the bed. It was like all the adrenaline just evaporated from her in that instant, with Bucky standing in the corner, in full view of the entire room and its solitary window. His eyes darted across the tiny frame, like he was processing— listening, maybe? Maybe he’d inherited Steve’s superhuman hearing, but she didn’t get the chance to ask him about it. 

Seconds later, those cold blue eyes were back on her, looking at her expectantly.

Part of Darcy wanted to run and hide, maybe even scream, but that bigger part of her, the one urging her not to bring Steve in yet, knew there was more to this. Their meet. There were so many questions swimming in her head. The whos and the whats. Where? How? But first off, Darcy realized, maybe most importantly, she had to wonder _why_ he was there in the first place?

Was this just a ‘right time, right place’ scenario, or had he been following her?

And if so, for how long?

“Can I ask you a question?” Darcy started, unsure how receptive he’d be to questioning.

She took his jerky nod as an affirmative, breathing in deeply to try to settle her nerves.

“Were you always here?”

His eyes narrowed, jaw stiff as he growled, “What?”

Darcy straightened in her seat, wincing slightly at his tone. But this was too important to drop. She bit her lip and lowered her voice, trying again.

“Did you just happen to find me, or were you following me?”

“Following.”

Bucky didn’t hesitate with his answer, barking it out as he kept eye contact. Darcy was finding it harder to hold his gaze, afraid her eyes would give her away, tell him how much more this meeting meant to her than it should.

Darcy all but whispered, “Since when?”

He shrugged, unperturbed, and she didn’t miss that it was the most he’d moved the whole conversation. Stock still like a statue, she’d blame it on military training, but Steve was restless as hell out in the field, so maybe it was just him.

Maybe it had just been beaten into him. Darcy gulped at the thought.

“Pickpocket. Olomouc.”

“What?” she gasped, her heart rate picked up. That had been a week ago now—another country. Several cities ago. Her stomach twisted as she asked the next question, voice fraying as her nerves bled into her tone. “W-Why? Why did you follow me?”

Bucky seemed to shrug again, but it felt different. He shifted in his stance as those eyes dropped to the floor, adding, “Dunno.”

“Why did you step in today? Why did you let me see you?” Darcy breathed, unable to get her head around the question, around his answers.

He looked almost as bewildered as she was, just with that smooth spy veneer. But every so often, Darcy could see that flicker of confusion, maybe, with a little sprinkling of fear. Like her answers were starting to draw something out of him that he couldn’t quite place.

“Different,” he replied stiffly, seemingly avoiding the question. “Weapons.”

Darcy chewed on the answer as she surveyed him, watching him brood in the corner, eyes occasionally darting. She wasn’t even sure she’d have recognized him like this, if Steve hadn’t told her. If she hadn’t watched hours of security footage from DC.

She tried to unclench every muscle in her body, her fist letting go of the bedspread it’d nervously burrowed into as Darcy took a deep breath and continued, “You said you know me.”

“I do—” he started, hand reached up to brush his hair out of his face, fingers digging into his scalp. “I-I don’t know how.”

Darcy nodded like it mattered, like her validating his feelings, his lack of memories, made a difference. Maybe it was happenstance, or maybe she just had one of those faces.

“Do you know my name?” Darcy asked softly, already knowing the answer.

Bucky shook his head, offering a quiet, “Sorry.”

He just stood there with that look. Like he was trying to place her, like the memory was on the tip of his tongue, his apology still hanging in the air.

And if that hadn’t been enough to convince Darcy that somewhere deep inside was the man she knew, there was that look. That pained expression she’d seen once in her apartment in Stark Tower. At that moment when she almost broke, eye wrung red and heart racing, and it was like she was right back in that memory.

She tried to gulp away the lump in her throat, but it only seemed to get tighter the longer she looked at him.

Even though she’d known what his response would be, her stomach dropped anyway, the only thing in her ears that last thump of fear running through her system. Darcy was tired, limbs heavy, eyes pulsing as she tried to get a handle on the situation.

“What now?” he asked, voice cutting into the dim light.

That question might have been the only one Darcy knew how to answer, at least in the short term, sitting a little straighter as she levelled with him.

“Now, we call for help.”

“Help?”

Bucky didn’t sound convinced, eyes narrowed and forehead creased as he stared her down. Darcy tried to ignore the icy looks, going back to the closest thing to a script she’d drilled into her skull.

“Do you remember Steve? Steve Rogers? You grew up together in Brooklyn. He used to be really tiny, but then he got the serum?”

Bucky stared at her blankly.

“No cops. No doctors.”

Darcy shook her head, “They’re not cops or doctors. They just want to help you.”

“No help.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Bucky didn’t sound as angry as he had before, back in the alley. And that was the only thing keeping Darcy’s voice smooth and level, the only thing from trying to hightail it out of here. He was insistent, maybe even a little petulant, but this Bucky wasn’t aggressive— not to her.

Darcy just had to hope he’d keep this up as she started to press him.

“Don’t you want to stop hiding?” Darcy tried, that soft curve of her voice trying to keep it open-ended. “I know for damn sure you could’ve lost me in a second after you cleared the alley— disappeared into a puff of smoke if you wanted. You’re good at that, at stealth and hiding. But you’re not hiding now.”

There was a beat of silence when both of them knew what she’d say next, and neither of them knew the answer.

“I just want to know _why_.”

She could almost see the cogs working behind his eyes, trying to find something, anything that would explain this.

“Maybe something deep down inside knows you need help. Maybe it knows I can help you,” Darcy added tentatively, watching closely for his response. A blink or a twitch or a shift.

Anything. _Any_ tell.

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He looked frustrated; something kept escaping him, “I know you. I don’t know how, but I do.”

“I think there’s something inside you knows— that wants _help_. But I don’t want to force you into anything.” 

‘ _Not when you could murder me without a second thought_ ,’ she added in her head a little more soberly. 

Bucky let out a huff of air, his hands loosening from their earlier fists, hanging at his side. Running a hand through his hair, she could see his fingers dig into his scalp again. He was thinking. That much Darcy could tell.

But she wouldn’t have guessed the next words out of his mouth in a million years.

“What’s next for _you_?”

There was a moment she wondered if she’d heard him right ( _again_ ), if she’d just dreamt it up, but he looked at her like he was expecting an answer. 

Clearing her throat and trying to get her thoughts in order, Darcy managed to sputter, “I uh, I would go back with you, back to New York. And I’d be around if you needed help or an oddly familiar face?”

He made something close to a harrumph, arms crossed back over his chest as he looked out the window, avoiding her eyes. Non-commital. Darcy wasn’t about to consider that consent. Not like this. Not with him.

“So, uh, I don’t mean to push or anything, but… can I call? I don’t want to lose my head,” Darcy joked in an almost kidding tone, but she wasn’t fooling either of them.

Bucky’s eyes flickered to her pocket, where he’d already spotted her phone. Because, of course, he had. 

He groused, “Go ahead.”

With one last look to make sure he was serious, Darcy pulled out her burner phone and hit the only number in the phonebook.

“Darcy?” was the breathless response on the other end. 

Their call was clearly a casualty of time zones. Darcy did the mental math and figured it was about his usual gym time back home. Steve’s schedule— world end-y situations aside— ran like clockwork, after all. She’d probably caught him between sets.

“I’ve got him. I’m on my scheduled itinerary.”

There was no hesitation, the breathlessness long gone, and Captain America voice on in full force.

“See you in four.”

Four hours, she realized. She had to sit in the dark with a man who’d killed more people than she probably had acquaintances. Well, no, not him. She had to correct herself on that. The Winter Soldier, under Hydra’s control and manipulation, had killed a whole lot of people.

Bucky Barnes had just been along for the ride.

“Steve says he’ll be here in about four hours,” Darcy mumbled, tossing the phone onto the bedspread. “Feel free to eat or sleep or do anything other than stare at me for that time…”

She probably shouldn’t have been so blunt, but as the excitement of coming to the end of a mission faded, the reality of the situation was starting to set in. Here they were, in the middle of a country Darcy didn’t speak the language of, in a room no bigger than a standard cloakroom in Stark Tower, with no weapons and no back-up.

And no real plan other than waiting for Steve to get there.

“ _Do you even know what you’re going to do if you_ do _find him?_ ” 

Tony’s parting words rang through her ears like the Liberty Bell, deafening as the memory seemed to freeze her in place. What was she supposed to say to him?

She lay down on her bed, head in the crook of her elbow and eyes wide open as she stared at him across the room. Her heart was beating much too fast to do anything but watch him as her brain tried to piece together everything he’d admitted to her. 

Darcy Lewis, for once in her life, was at a loss for words,

But somehow, about ten minutes into the silence that followed her phone call, Bucky found his. A gravelly voice rose up from the other end of the room, eyes still locked on her.

“How do I know you?”

Darcy shook her head, picking at a loose thread in the comforter as she mumbled, “I’m not sure if you do. But I know _you_.”

She wasn’t about to lie to him, not even with everything that was on the line. Sure, she didn’t know if anything of their theories were anything more than bedtime stories, but she couldn’t hold back. Not when she was already forcing him so far out of his comfort zone.

The lines in his face deepened as he stared her down, “That doesn’t make sense.”

She chuckled humourlessly, “None of this makes sense. Trust me.”

The corners of his lips tugged down like he was considering her answers. He’d moved to the wall, leaning against it as he asked her one more question.

“Who am I?”

Darcy’s throat felt tight. She hadn’t even thought to start him off at the very basics, assuming he’d had some sort of basic understanding of _himself_ by now. But clearly, that was foolish— clearly, this was a lot worse than most of them had assumed. She’d put her needs and wants against his own in the line of questioning. That pang in her gut, that telltale guilt bubbled up to the surface.

“You were— you are, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Bucky.”

The name hung in the air for a moment, and Darcy felt like she had to catch her breath. None of her prep and research and raw talks with Steve and Sam had prepared her for this. Nothing prepared her for teetering in this in-between— the place between the Winter Soldier and the Bucky Barnes she’d known.

Who may or may not have known her.

Neither of them said anything for another twenty minutes, Darcy watching the time tick by with the clock on her shitty flip phone. The room felt a little smaller when they were both quiet— maybe that was just the side effect of having a trained assassin across the room from her, but Darcy wouldn’t know.

She’d never been in this situation before.

“You want to try to get some sleep?” Darcy offered.

Her heart was racing too fast to do it herself, the acid creeping up her throat as she sat up and leaned her back against the wall. Bucky hadn’t moved an inch in the time since his last question, stoic as ever as he gruffed, “You sleep.”

“Nothing personal, but I don’t think I can. Sorry,” Darcy said in her quietest voice, wrapping her arms around her knees as she tried to get a hold of herself.

Bucky harrumphed, crossing his arms and slumping further into the wall behind him like he was settling in for a long haul. The rest of their time together was silent. Sometimes, she heard someone in the hall and watched him bolt to attention, but he didn’t seem on edge overall. It made her wonder if he knew something she didn’t— it was hard to imagine anyone this calm on the run.

Darcy didn’t sleep a wink, eyes feeling like sandpaper by the time there was movement.

Bucky scrambled to his feet a full minute before the sound of a knock rang out. Darcy figured he could hear Steve coming from quite a ways away. He immediately shadowed the door, one hand reaching down towards his ankle to reveal a blade Darcy hadn’t clocked when they first sat down.

 _Great_. Antagonism was not a great start.

Arms up in surrender as she slowly rose to stand, Darcy assured him, “It’s just my friend. It’s just Steve— the one I told you about. He’s here to help us.”

But Bucky didn’t look convinced, insisting, with a rough jerk of his chin, that he would open the door and not Darcy.

“By all means,” she sighed, swinging her hands towards the door in invitation.

Crowding the crack in the door, Darcy watched, breath held, as Bucky cracked it open, the hand leaning on the doorframe still clutching the knife. 

Steve stood in the open doorway, clearly unsure what to expect with the look on his face. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t Bucky poised to strike the intruder, stopping only with Darcy’s cry of “He’s with us!” But even so, Bucky didn’t drop the weapon, letting his arm fall to his side at Darcy’s insistence as his eyes flicked back to the oversized blond skeptically.

“That’s Steve. I recognize him. We’re fine,” Darcy said, trying to keep the assurances short and to the point.

Bucky looked back at her like he was gauging her truthfulness before swinging the door open and taking a few steps back, still keeping himself between her and Steve.

The look on Steve’s face broke Darcy’s heart. Forehead creased, sans shield, in only his civilian gear, Steve looked at a loss for words as he took the other man in.

“ _Buck_.”

That hoarse greeting didn’t earn him a response, Bucky staying tight-lipped as Steve carefully entered the room and closed the door behind him. He kept his distance from both of them, especially Steve, turning to face him as he crossed the room, acting as a human wall between Darcy and Steve.

“I’m not armed,” Steve explained, keeping his hands in view. “You can check if you want, but I just want to talk. I just want to help you. However I can.”

Bucky seemed to accept the offer, nodding dimly, but Darcy could tell he was still on-edge, on-guard. Vigilant, as he watched Steve sink into the couch.

“Darcy, Sam’s in the hall if you want to join him while we talk.”

Darcy turned to leave as Steve settled, his eyes barely flicking over to acknowledge her as he spoke. Not that she could blame him— she’d caught herself drifting off into faraway thoughts more than once in that dimly lit room, even if she had sat on the edge of her seat the entire time. 

But just as she was about to meet Sam, Bucky all but growled in the loudest tone she’d heard from him, “ _No_. She stays.”

Darcy tried to ignore the pained expression on Steve’s face as he pleaded with her, questioned her with those big blue eyes. From what she could tell, based on their conversation in New York and what she could see in him now, Steve was equal parts concerned for her safety and mourning his best friend. Darcy wished she could’ve snapped her fingers and given them both what they wanted, but it couldn’t be that easy. It never was that easy.

And, as much as she didn’t want to intrude on their moment, something inside Bucky was clearly screaming in protest at the thought of letting her out of his sight, and neither of them were prepared to deal with the fall-out, if there was one— not really.

It was that moment she realized she was having a hard time breathing, air stuck in her chest as she tried to fight against the tightness in her throat.

“Can I stay, Steve?” Darcy breathed, her building tears betraying the sense of calm she’d been faking so well up until now. She didn’t wait for Steve’s reply as she tried to sniff them back, adding, “I can stay right here on the bed. Is that OK, Bucky?”

Bucky offered a rough nod, Steve’s a little dimmer as she crossed the room and sat on the bed. Bucky followed her, keeping himself halfway between Steve and Darcy, standing straight and at attention. His eyes darted towards the door for a second, and Darcy wondered for a moment if it was the fact Sam was in the hallway that was keeping him on edge.

None of them said anything about it, though, settling in the awkward silence before Steve took the reins back on the conversation.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, the rough edge on his voice betraying his emotions. “After DC. Are you…?”

“No.”

The curt answer didn’t seem to satisfy Steve. 

“Do you remember who you are? Who I am?”

Another shake of the head as Steve’s expression sunk further into almost disappointment— just for a split second, as he quickly recovered and got himself back to neutral. Darcy knew what he was going to say next, what he was going to offer. They couldn’t afford to stay in one place too long, especially with so many people after, well, all of them, really.

“Listen, we— _I_ know how hard it is to be on the run all the time. And we want to get the assholes who did this to you,”

“They deserve to die.”

The entire energy in the room seemed to stutter to a halt at his words— one of the longest sentences he’d said so far. Steve eyed Darcy nervously, clearly trying to come up with a more palatable framing of the situation.

Because they both knew that Bucky’s assertion wasn’t wrong.

“They deserve to be brought to justice,” Steve corrected, a little harsher before dropping down to a more polite range. “And you deserve to live your life. In the US. If you want to.”

It seemed to be a stand-off between them after that, the air thick as they waited for the other to break. Darcy cleared her throat, asking the unasked question that needed to be cleared up.

“Did you get the deal?” Darcy asked Steve, brows furrowed. It hadn’t been a sure thing when she’d left, contingent on whether they’d be able to bring Bucky in peacefully in the first place.

Steve nodded, a silent thank you for getting them back on track, before turning back to Bucky, “We worked it out. You’ll still have to testify, maybe go to trial, but there’s no way they’ll convict. Stark’s pulling out all the stops, and if we can bring more of Hydra in—”

“Stark?”

Nodding, Steve clarified, “Yeah, Buck. Tony Stark.”

“I killed them.”

The words sounded hollow, even in the tiny room, the crackling in his voice ringing out in his confession. But this wasn’t news to any of them, but from the sound of his voice and the way the lines of his form softened and slumped, it seemed to weigh heavily on him. 

Even if he didn’t entirely know why.

“It wasn’t _you_ —” Steve shook his head, seemingly knowing he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that kind of reasoning today. Settling instead on, “He knows.”

And that seemed to be the end of that line of questioning. At least until Bucky spoke up again.

“Darcy?”

Darcy shivered, her breath trapped in her chest as she tried to piece together what he was asking. Thankfully Steve seemed a little quicker on the uptake.

“What _about_ Darcy?” Steve repeated, eyes narrowed as Bucky nodded. “Darcy’s coming with us— if that’s alright with her?”

Both sets of eyes snapped to her, that heavy tension set firmly on her shoulders.

“I never turn down a Quinjet ride,” she said with a hint of a smile, a ghost of her usual self. She could see the confusion, the fear in Bucky’s eyes as he stared at her, so she tried to assure him, “I trust Steve. And Sam. And even Tony. But you get a choice in this, Bucky. It’s your choice to make.”

Without much more thought, he shook his head and turned back to Steve.

“I’m with her.”


	8. Chapter 8

Darcy’s head was swimming in questions as they finally opened the door to reveal a relieved — if not confused— Sam out in the hall. At the top of that very long list was ‘why the hell Bucky had decided _she_ was the one he was trusting?’ right above the unasked ‘what the hell did Steve Rogers have to do to get a man who’d been branded an international terrorist such a good deal?’

But it was once they started making their way to the roof that the nerves really set in. 

Would he be able to build a life in the United States? Would he be accepted by society to live an everyday existence? Or would he be in and out of the public eye, complete with cameras, reporters and nosey interns?

She couldn’t imagine the latter going well.

It was hard enough getting him on a QuinJet, those blue eyes darting back and forth, searching for anything out of the ordinary, any whiff of a threat. Not to _him_. They couldn’t hurt him, not really. No, because the only way James Buchanan Barnes was getting on that QuinJet was with Darcy by his side, a strong arm behind her back as they boarded. It was _her_ that he was worried about.

She found it almost reassuring that somehow she had become his ward, that there was something inside of him that knew she was fragile — that knew he wanted to protect her. 

So by the time Steve got behind the controls, and all of them strapped in, Bucky in the jump seat next to Darcy, thigh grazing hers, she was ready to call the whole operation a win. She’d never expected him to agree to come back with them, to the Tower and to the country and the shattered organization that had failed him— _used_ him.

But Darcy Lewis was smart enough to know that the real challenge was still ahead of them, once they landed in the United States. And it wasn’t the government or the legislation. It wasn’t Tony Stark with his jaw snapped shut as he watched the man who was coerced into killing his parents disembark. 

It was the only true unknown: everyone else.

* * *

That first night back, Bucky slept on the couch in Darcy’s Stark Tower apartment, Steve taking the floor in solidarity and probably a sprinkle of fear. She tried hard not to think about the time Bucky had laid a blanket on top of _her_ on that same couch. Tried not to see the worry in Steve’s eyes, knowing he wouldn’t be sleeping that night. But Bucky didn’t insist on following her into her bedroom or her bathroom (thankfully), so she had her own quiet space to mentally break down that night.

Add a whole two hours of sleep onto everything, and Darcy was fine with chalking it up to small mercies.

She could remember the skeptical looks and the quiet whispers that passed them in the halls in the days that followed. Looking at Bucky like he was a predator that had escaped from the zoo. Hushed murmurs asking why he didn’t have to have a security detail with him ’round the clock— which got particularly loud when Steve wasn’t in super soldier earshot.

But mostly, they were asking why he always seemed to be where Darcy was. 

Why he looked at every person like a target— no, a threat. And to his credit, he wasn’t wrong. A misstep or two, and he could be hauled off by some pseudo-government agency, locked in some bunker again to rot— or worse yet be tested on, for all she knew. 

So there he stayed, glued to her side and eyeing everyone around them suspiciously. 

It was hard not to be on edge with Bucky looking around every corner like they’d never be safe again, wondering if it was terrible that she felt better when he was around.

But the worst part was overhearing the whispers that he’d slip and she’d end up dead within the week. 

Darcy’s fist balled at their faux concern, their need to make everyone a victim except the prisoner of war who had literally been tortured for several decades.

He didn’t talk too much those first few days back as the rest of the team tried to develop a plan on how exactly to deal with this. All Bucky had to offer were yes or no answers, five-word sentences, no flourishes, no emotion, no reasoning. 

Each day, like clockwork, he perched himself in the corner of Darcy and Jane’s lab— or Darcy’s office when she was doing paperwork or taking calls— and just watched. Steve said it was likely residual programming, some protection protocol maybe, but Darcy didn’t mind, as long as it was his choice. The staff probably thought of him more as her own not-so-little private security guard this way, which was almost comforting. 

And, sure, some people avoided being in intimate rooms with her, afraid to get up close and personal with the Winter Soldier. Still, neither Darcy nor Steve were that worried, not with Stark Tower rigged to high hell with security and Cap being on speed dial in case of emergencies.

But still, even if his responses were getting longer (with Darcy, at least), there was that worry in her gut that Bucky wasn’t progressing— that he might _not_ progress. And even just that thought made her feel guilty for expecting something of him after everything he’d been through. 

Darcy worried that they didn’t have more answers by now.

It was two weeks later, and they still couldn’t really explain it. How their five days together had somehow been burned into Bucky’s skull, but no one could refute the connection or the recognition they shared. Tony had waxed poetic about potential interference, mystical or otherwise (even if he didn’t really buy it). Hydra was big on using forces they didn’t entirely understand, after all.

And their connection… It was on a deeper level than anyone felt comfortable bringing up in casual conversation, saving it for private whispers and murmurs behind closed doors— which Darcy almost hated _more_.

“We don’t even know if we can fix this,” Darcy had caught Tony saying to Sam one day in his lab, making her stomach twist into knots. “Kid could be a murderous vegetable— a _sleeper_ agent for the rest of his life, for all we know.”

It was one of those rare times Bucky was down in medical without her, one of the only scenarios in which he didn’t want her around. With medical personnel being a top-tier threat to the man whose sole purpose seemed to be protecting Darcy, even _he_ thought she’d be safer away from the fray. Steve accompanied him instead, mostly as a buffer so the doctors and nurses would have protection if anything went wrong.

And things did go wrong.

Not during testing or therapy. Not lunches with Steve or meetings with Tony. No, things only tended to go really wrong when Darcy was around. It had gotten so heated at one point that he’d knocked an unruly intern to the ground when he went to squeeze Darcy’s arm in the cafeteria in greeting. That had taken _a lot_ of paperwork and apologies.

But Darcy wasn’t convinced he was unfixable like Tony might have been, and she shot both men a dirty look as they turned around, bewildered to find her standing there.

“Darcy—” Tony started, but she was already breaking away down the hall, racing back towards the safety of her office down the aisle.

She _knew_ it was a long-shot. She also knew this wasn’t entirely her fault, but somehow Darcy still had that guilty gurgle in the pit of her stomach that she was the reason he was here. Why he wasn’t living a quiet life off the grid somewhere. Why he was putting his mind and body through every diagnostic imaging and test imaginable. Because she was selfish.

Because _she_ needed him here.

Why couldn’t he just live a quiet life if he wanted to? Skip all the potentially invasive procedures and prodding? After all, it should have been his choice. They shouldn’t be treating him like he was some sort of plague to quarantine, isolate and _treat_ like some sort of disease.

“Darce?” Jane’s head poked through the crack in her office door, watching her warily from the hall. “Do you need some space, or?”

Darcy sank into her office chair, elbows on her knees as she cradled her head. 

“Tony convinced he’s going to be some sleeper agent, l-like he’s just going to up a-and…” Sniffling, Darcy couldn’t even manage words, shaking her head as Jane shutting the door behind her before crossing the room and engulfing her.

“Darcy,” Jane soothed, wrapping her arms around her neck and pulling her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. People are— well, people don’t understand. The others just don’t get it.”

Jane was the last person Darcy would have expected to waltz in here, throwing around apologies and letting her cry on her shoulder. Not that they weren’t close friends, but touchy-feely comfort wasn’t exactly Jane’s usual wheelhouse. She was more likely to offer a pint of ice cream or call everyone outside the lab assholes on her behalf. This… this was different.

“I _know_ it’s not his fault. I know more than anyone that sometimes you’re at the mercy of your brain— that sometimes you’re just wired that way, and it doesn’t mean you’re broken or—”

Darcy squeezed her friend tighter as she sobbed, knowing what she meant. 

“And I know I haven’t been there for you lately, but we’re going to help him. I’m going to help _you_ too, however you need it,” Jane assured. “No one understood the whole Thor thing— honestly, people still look at me a little funny for it— but it was real. I know it was. And I can see it’s real for you, too, Darce.”

Pulling back to get a good look at her, Darcy’s lower lip was still wobbling as she hastily wiped at her cheeks. 

“Thank you,” she croaked, watching her friend’s eyes shining in the darkness— she hadn’t even managed to flick on the light before breaking down. “I, uh— I just need a few minutes to… to think,” Darcy managed to get out, still gulping breaths of air between sniffles.

“Of course,” Jane said, gently squeezing her shoulder before heading back towards the door. She stopped at the threshold, looking back at her friend, “It’s going to be alright, Darcy. We’ll figure something out.”

Darcy nodded dimly.

Even if she didn’t believe it yet, she was firmly in the fake it ’til you make it camp of logic as she rasped back, “I know we will. We always do.”

The door had barely closed behind Jane when Darcy spotted a familiar red light blinking on her office phone. Well, now was as good a time as any for a work distraction. Picking up the headset, she dialled into her voicemail and heard the dulcet tones of their phone AI telling her she had one new message.

‘ _First voicemail:_ ’

“ _Hello there. I’m looking for a Miss Darcy Lewis. It has come to my attention that we may be able to help each other out on a matter of_ international _significance on the topic of memory? My name is Doctor Charles Xavier, and if you have a moment, I think it may be quite worthwhile for a discussion about our_ friend _. Please feel free to look me up if you’re unsure. I’ll be awaiting your call._ ”

Darcy didn’t bother with the phone’s menu as the British accent cut off, unable to hear the automated response over the pounding in her ears. How did anyone know that Bucky was back? It hadn’t hit the press yet. The only way the government let him back was under cover of secrecy.

Fingers flying across her keyboard, Darcy hopped into the Stark Industries database and typed ‘Charles Xavier’ into the search bar. There was a picture clipped out from some old file, with the pale-skinned bald man a little scuffed and worn with age. The details were limited, to say the least, with many of the typical —necessary, even— fields left blank.

“Mutant?” Darcy muttered to herself, eyes quickly skimming across the light but informative file. “Westchester. Telepath? There are actual telepaths? Well, that explains how he knew.”

No date of birth, no biological children listed, no partner, no weaknesses. Even SHIELD didn’t seem to have much on the man, and they were a full-blown evil organization when Stark Industries last scraped this data. But still, there were a couple exciting tidbits further down. He ran a school for gifted children— SHIELD had suspicions gifted was code for enhanced, but something must have kept them away if they hadn’t checked.

But there was one classification that made her eyes narrow, forehead creased as she read it out loud, “Omega level… What the hell does that even _mean_?”

It felt like she was reading some sci-fi book— although, come to think of it, that was most of her existence. She printed off a copy of the file, tucking it into her agenda as she mulled over her options. She couldn’t do this all on her own. She knew that. Not after what happened last time.

“JARVIS, can you see if Tony and Steve have time to talk about a potential lead?”

 _He owes me one_ , she added to herself. _Big time._

* * *

Tony Stark had exhausted all options. He’d reached out to all of his contacts, coast-to-coast, continent-to-continent, and still, somehow, came up short. Sure, this wasn’t a typical case— nothing about his life was ever _typical_ — but still, no one wanted to take a chance on a brainwashed, ex-military, former assassin. Chuck in an upset lab assistant, and it didn’t seem to be his day.

Pepper kept asking him if he was alright with the arrangement. If he’d be able to stay level-headed, and he kept brushing her off. It had taken a lot to push aside the fact that Bucky Barnes, war hero and Captain America’s best friend, had been the one to kill his parents. His _mom_. 

But in true Tony Stark fashion, he was dead set on searching for a solution to the problem and pushing aside his own feelings.

Compound that with the team’s skepticism of whether rehabilitation was even possible, and it was hard to know who was even leading who anymore. Rhodey wouldn’t return his calls, not wanting to get himself in further shit with the government that he already had pulling these strings, and Pepper was too busy running the company to play the rock to his hard place.

He was trying to drown his guilt in his work— like he usually did— when JARVIS sounded overheard.

“Sir, Miss Lewis is requesting a moment of your time regarding the Sergeant’s case.”

His head shot up from his work-desk, breaking himself out of the daze he hadn’t realized he’d been in, twisting a screw into place for so long that he’d managed to strip it completely. Well, so much for that. 

Maybe Darcy wasn’t so mad at him after all.

“Patch her through, J.”

Something about the way Darcy Lewis looked up at him in that hospital room stayed with him, haunted him a little. Reminded him that Bucky Barnes was a human being too— _first_ — and that he wasn’t the only victim here. Tony hadn’t been the one locked in cryo for decades and used as a weapon. Still, it was a lot to consider—a big problem to solve.

One he was starting to think he wasn’t qualified to handle.

“Tony?”

“Lewis, talk to me,” Tony instructed, fingers itching to find something else to do with his hands. Something to tinker with, to fidget as he tried to pay attention.

Darcy cleared her throat, “I got a call from someone who knows Barnes is here.”

“Government?”

“No. Mutant?”

Tony stopped his tinkering, brain grinding to a halt as he turned to face the camera and seemingly stare into Darcy’s soul.

“You’ve piqued my interest. Proceed.”

Darcy looked nervous, reading off her computer screen, a case file reflected in his glasses, “A Dr. Charles Xavier in Westchester, runs a school out there. He’s a telepath?”

“A psychic, eh?” Tony murmured, scratching his chin. He’d heard of them— rumours mostly. Extraordinary powers, yadda yadda, government hated them (join the club), kind of rare. “Makes sense, having to root around the ol’ man’s noggin…”

“I don’t think psychic is exactly the ri—”

“JARVIS, show me what we’ve got. Lewis, leave this in my hands.”

 _Click_.

* * *

Slumping back in her office chair, Darcy didn’t feel any lighter. Something about Tony basically shoving her out the door at the first sign of a lead didn’t sit right with her. But she wasn’t exactly qualified to be making medical decisions on behalf of a man she’d known less than a week pre-brainwashing.

Kneading her forehead with her fingers, Darcy checked the time and realized Bucky’s appointment would be over soon. He and Steve would probably be back in the lab in twenty minutes— the former to keep watch over her work and the latter more for show than anything. That meant she had fifteen to make it look like she wasn’t mid-breakdown. Nothing a little concealer and lipstick couldn’t fix.

Right?

She’d managed a quick swipe of colour and a tiny touch-up underneath her eyes before she heard the super soldiers stomping down the hall outside her office. Taking a deep breath to settle her nerves, Darcy pasted on a smile and asked her usual question, “How’d it go?”

“It went,” Bucky replied, just a blankly as he usually did.

Darcy looked to Steve for any sort of reaction, but he merely shrugged. It wasn’t a lot to go on. Darcy silently weighed the options, deciding whether or not to tell them about her update. 

But Bucky didn’t seem agitated today, so she took her chances.

“I uh, might’ve gotten a lead on someone to help,” Darcy said, carefully watching Bucky’s reaction. “It’s in Tony’s hands, but I’m sure if you bug him enough—”

“I’m on it,” Steve said with a sharp nod, knowing exactly what she meant. “You two alright here?”

His cautious blue eyes darted between the pair as he asked the question. Steve had been careful, too, not wanting to ask too much or too often. Tip-toeing around issues. Waiting for Darcy to bring this up. He had a tendency to hover, somewhere near the sidelines, but at least Steve seemed to be in both of their corners, as far as she could tell.

“Peachy,” Darcy replied, kicking herself for sounding too stiff.

Bucky raised a brow but didn’t say anything until Steve was clear of the door.

“You alright?” 

Bucky’s low voice caught Darcy off-guard as she tried to get herself back into a work headspace, flipping through paperwork. It wasn’t that she was surprised he waited until Steve left to speak. It just seemed an odd thing to ask.

She arched a brow and shot back, “I should be asking _you_ that.”

Bucky shrugged, shifting in his seat. Some days they’d talk about his sessions— usually not in explicit detail, but talk nonetheless. It was like a game of twenty questions, trading truths back and forth. The only currency that seemed to mean anything to either of them these days.

“Stark stopped by for a few minutes and was asking about magic mumbo jumbo in… in the experiments, in the beginning,” Bucky admitted in a low voice, looking up at her. “Your turn.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed slightly. She didn’t realize Tony was a part of the inner circle that could just stop in on medical visits, and somehow that almost made what she’d overheard today worse. A migraine screeched through her head, and Darcy rubbed at her forehead to try to ease the pain. 

“I’m fine,” she assured.

Bucky harrumphed, unconvinced, “You don’t have to pretend all the time.”

“Pretend?”

Biting her lip, she knew Bucky knew a lot more than anyone was telling him. It was like he could sense it, her bad days. He always hovered a little closer on those, didn’t say as much, brought Darcy coffee without asking. 

“That everything’s alright. I know this is weird for you. Awkward or whatever,” Bucky gruffed, observing Darcy carefully.

But that guilt eating away at the pit of her stomach kept telling her they couldn’t keep this up.

This charade. This little buddy cop thing they had going on.

Darcy Lewis was still sure that one day they’d make progress, figure out how to fix the loops and lockboxes that was his brain, and he’d be out of here. Probably on the first plane out.

“It’s fine.”

But his eyes seemed to be glued to her the rest of the day, all the way until he walked her to her apartment before leaving to have dinner with Steve. They alternated days, sometimes gathering together when Darcy had the energy to not look like exhaustion in human form. But either way, Bucky tended to end up in her apartment by the end of the night one way or another.

Believe her, Steve tried to fight them tooth and nail on it at first, but these days, he didn’t supervise Bucky’s overnight visits and stays. There was a level of trust there that Darcy hadn’t honestly expected that quickly.

Officially, Bucky lived with Steve, but most nights he’d be at Darcy’s for a movie night, tucking her into bed and holing up on the couch. 

At least, that’s what she’d come to assume when she wandered out of her bed and found him waiting when she awoke. She wasn’t sure if he actually _slept_ every time, or even some of the times, but she knew the nights he did— she could hear them. The whimpers and the moans, the tossing and turning.

Those nights he called her name, so desperately she wanted to cry. She’d woken with a start, watching him from the hallway, knowing better than to wake him. He always woke himself after a few tense minutes, and she’d wait, holding her breath down the hall to call out to him.

“Buck? You alright?”

He’d rasp in the dark, “Yeah.”

Biting her lip, stopping herself from padding down the hall and brushing his hair out of his face, laying a fresh blanket over him, Darcy sniffed back the tightness in her throat.

“Let me know if you need anything,” she called back before settling into the silence that followed.

After all, Darcy couldn’t just assume he’d want her there, that he’d want _anyone_ to see the aftermath of his nightmares. So, she took him at his word, too scared to screw up all the progress he’d been making by putting too much pressure on him to open up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: we get an update on Westchester, treatment and maybe even a little progress??? I can’t believe this series is wrapping up soon!
> 
> Slightly unrelated: my one-year AO3 posting anniversary is coming up, and I’m writing bonus chapters for some of my completed fics to celebrate. If you are interested in seeing some of my fics get extended, [the link to vote on fics and the full details are listed here](https://pasmonblog.tumblr.com/post/644454862511325184).


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said chapter seven was the longest? Well, I lied (not intentionally, but… writing things happened).
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

It took Tony and Steve three weeks to work out a deal with the team in Westchester. 

Oh yes, there was a _team_. The X-Men or something. The title seemed a _little_ sexist, but Darcy kept her trap locked tight, not wanting to ruffle the feathers of the only people who seemed even mildly qualified enough to help them.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Darcy asked Bucky a few nights before his first appointment.

They’d been putting away the dishes, TV on in the background with something neither of them had been paying attention to. Their regular routine involved dinner with Steve and movies with popcorn. The two of them tried everything and anything to try to jog those latent memories of him. And for the first little while, those first few nights, it was almost like she had her roommate back again, even if he didn’t seem to remember the layout or the movies they’d already seen. 

Still, every night as they sat down in front of the TV, she half-hoped that he’d reference something, that his brain would make some sort of connection and realize he’d been there before. That they knew each other. That they’d met and cuddled and even shared a bed…

But it never seemed to come, and he was starting to think he knew something was missing too.

Darcy had been lost in thought for days already, wondering what would happen to him, but also to _them_. It was selfish, she knew that, but part of her wondered if there was something still there— if something inside him felt more than just a base instinct to protect her.

If maybe that was covering up something that had been there all along…

But now wasn’t the time for self-serving questions, not when this Doctor had the potential to help Bucky where no one else could. It was the first real decision beyond stepping onto the QuinJet that he’d made himself.

So, how could they— how could _she_ ask any more of him?

“I think it’s the only way,” Bucky admitted. “I— I don’t think I can fix this by myself. Hell, I’m not even sure it _can_ be fixed—”

There had already been so many hearings and testimony, armies of lawyers and heavily escorted field trips to courthouses. Sometimes Darcy got pulled in for glorified teddy bear duty, mostly when Bucky decided to be particularly stubborn. Those days he wouldn’t let her out of his sight besides the bathroom. 

The hollow look in his eyes, the exhaustion afterwards. The twitchy aftermath on her couch, tossing and turning… Darcy had heard a lot more than she ever thought she would, somehow weaselling her way into an even higher clearance level than she’d even realized existed (’ _thank you, Tony_ ’). 

And it was getting harder and harder to pretend she was getting much more sleep than Bucky was, some days.

Sure, her work was suffering in the process. It was hard to concentrate these days, with so many things in the air, and somehow Darcy still had to look like she had everything together. She had to be the calm in the face of a storm. Clint stopped by with coffee some days, even trying to chat a little with Bucky. 

Sometimes he’d get a couple sentences out of him, and Darcy wouldn’t be able to get the smile off her face at the progress.

Because, after all of that, how could they ask anything more?

“You don’t need to be fixed, Buck,” Darcy corrected in her smallest voice. “You just need help. We all need a little help, if you’re ready.”

“I’m ready to stop feeling like a useless cardboard cut-out of someone everyone else seems to know,” Bucky said before turning to face her, looking a little less sure about the next few words. “It’s a little weird, though, me being here with you and Stevie. Not remembering how you two remember me.”

She wanted to reach over, wrap him in a hug and tell him it was them against the world. Darcy wished that could happen. But as it was, Bucky wasn’t ready to touch or be touched, save the shoulder brushes when he got particularly territorial, or the occasional knee brushes on the side-by-side on the couch.

So instead, she tried to keep her lips from tugging themselves into a frown.

“Hey,” she soothed as her head dipped down, eyes finding his. “No pressure. If you never remember me, we’ll just chalk it up to time travel, alright?”

“Time travel?”

Darcy smiled, huffing a laugh at the look on his face, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

“Whatever you say.”

* * *

Jane took her for coffee as a distraction. That’s how Darcy knew she looked as far-gone as she felt: Jane taking pity on her. Either that or she was trying to get her to stop wearing a hole in the lab floor, but it was the same principle either way.

Today was Bucky’s first meeting in Westchester with Charles Xavier.

“How was he?” Jane asked over the rim of her mug, looking up at her curiously.

Truthfully, to an outsider, it might have looked like Darcy had been worse off than Bucky that morning. Bile had been creeping up her throat every time her brain broached the subject, and she hadn’t absorbed a word of her work emails that morning.

It was weird when he was gone, with Darcy finding herself turning around, expecting to see him in the corner of her eye. But it was just her now.

“He was quiet,” Darcy admitted. “Peaceful, almost? He seemed to want the help.”

Jane’s offered a jerky nod, “That’s good, right?”

“We’ll see.”

She was told— they were _all_ told not to expect anything after the first session, that it could take time for his mind and body to heal and catch up with all that lost time. All those lost memories.

But it didn’t stop her from rushing towards the locker rooms by the loading bay at the first sign of a QuinJet landing. Arms crossed, she leaned against the wall in the barren hallway, toes tapping away the nerves. 

He emerged ten minutes later, and Darcy couldn’t help but feel a pang of hope as she watched Bucky saunter off the QuinJet on his own, the ghost of a smile on his face. There was no wheelchair or ‘assistance’ via Steve, who shot her a grateful nod as he walked back to his room.

 _Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lewis_ , she reminded herself. But, at least Bucky wasn’t hurt or half-way through a panic attack (like she had been just hours earlier).

Small mercies.

“How are you feeling?” Darcy asked as Bucky fell into step, elbow brushing hers as they wove their way through the halls.

“Like my brain got rattled around my skull,” Bucky joked. “And like I could use a cup of coffee.”

Well, at least his sense of humour was still there. That was more comforting than Darcy wanted to admit, half-scared he’d come back a vegetable. After all, they didn’t know a whole lot about this Professor, this facility, up until a few weeks ago.

“To the kitchen, then,” she announced in a sing-song voice, weaving their way to the cupboards.

Bucky reached up to grab the bag of coffee Tony kept hiding on the top shelf. The good stuff that Darcy typically had to climb the countertops to reach. She shot him a grateful smile and started prepping, getting a generous scoop of ground coffee into the filter since Bucky liked it strong (and sweet). 

She pulled out a pair of mugs for them and leaned her elbow on the kitchen island, staring at him.

“So,” she started, trying to tamp down her smile, so she didn’t look like a crazy person. “What was it like?”

“Well, kinda like what those shrink offices look like in the movies. All oak bookshelves and academic looking,” Bucky admitted with the hint of a smile. “Doc sat me down, and… just touched my head, I guess?”

“Was it weird?” Darcy asked before her brain could even think to filter it out, clapping a hand over her mouth as Bucky shook his head.

“Felt strange, going through all these old memories. Like they’d always been there, you know?” Bucky sounded a little dazed. “Just… one by one…”

Bucky didn’t sound like himself. Maybe a little loopy? It didn’t seem like the Soldier, at least. She wondered if this was some sort of side effect to people rooting around others’ brains, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask. 

He looked a little less focussed as he spot, eyes drifting off to the area to her right. Did he remember something? Did she ask him the wrong question? Was she being too pushy?

“You alright?” Darcy asked, cautiously eyeing him up and down.

But Bucky just chuckled at her concern, brows furrowed like he couldn’t believe it himself. He shook his head, eyes finding hers again as he assured them both, “I’m fine— I just… Feeling a little like I fell down a rabbit hole for some reason.”

Darcy’s breath hitched, eyes flying over to his as she breathed, “What did you—?”

And just as Darcy turned to ask him if that was a fluke or if he’d really just referenced the book he’d read way back when, her elbow caught the ceramic handle, and the mug toppled. Well, nearly. Bucky managed to catch it before it emptied _all_ of its contents onto the floor, saving her from sweeping up another broken mug— that would have been number three in six months, by her count.

Her brain was still catching up to the action, all jumbled and confused and, honestly, a little concerned. Darcy watched as Bucky’s lips moved as if in slow motion.

“Whoops, doll. You alright there? Nearly lost your mug.”

The words seemed to slide out of his mouth so effortlessly that Darcy swore she was dreaming— hallucinating… something. Her mouth hung open as the sting set in her eyes. Bucky’s steel eyes stared back at her wide and fearful like he realized what he’d done. 

And something inside Darcy just knew what she had to say in response. She could remember the exact words like it was yesterday, speaking them just above a whisper, slow and steady to avoid the inevitable crackling of emotion. “I’m not usually this klutzy—”

“I know,” he said quietly. “It’s just me.”

The tears Darcy didn’t realize had been building broke free at those last words, spilling down her cheeks as she stared at him. Her chest heaved with breath, overwhelmed with a mix of confusion, a dash of fear, but mostly _joy_.

“You _do_ remember me,” Darcy breathed. “How?”

Bucky’s hands left the mug on the counter, reaching over to cup her face. Her eyes were darting back and forth between his, the brilliant blue, the glassy look. It was hard not to close her eyes and lean into the warmth of his hands, but she didn’t want to miss a second of this.

Even if she was just imagining it.

The corner of Bucky’s lip curved up, “I remember you, Darcy Lewis. The whole thing, from the coffee shop to the Hershey bar, to your parting advice.”

With the silent ‘no touching’ agreement firmly out of the picture, Darcy’s fingers balled into his shirt before she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close, finally breathing him in. It didn’t feel real, but even if it was just a dream, Darcy was going to make the most of it.

This was the most contact she’d had in months beyond pity hugs from Steve and Sam— the kind of connection she dreamed about on those hard nights.

“I missed you so much,” she murmured, voice crackling against his chest.

There was a split second after her admittance when Darcy worried she’d crossed the line, body stiffening against him as she wondered if she should pull away. As much as he’d been around her, shoulder-to-shoulder when she wasn’t actively working most days, Bucky and Darcy hadn’t been touchy-feely since they’d found each other.

They hadn’t hugged since they sent him back, both of them on the platform in Jane’s lab.

That kiss pressed to her hair, those parting words. Thinking about that day still made her throat tight.

So Darcy nearly sighed in relief when his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tight against his chest as she broke down and bawled. It was like all the pressure building up inside for months had reached the tipping point, Darcy sputtering out apologies for the waterworks as Bucky calmly hushed her. Darcy felt silly, breaking down like this when he’d been the one having his brain messed with, but she could feel him soften in her hold, sounding a little startled at her reaction.

But Darcy had been holding this in for some time now.

They’d probably have to explain this to someone at some point— them standing in the middle of the kitchen just holding each other. It was something you’d see in the arrivals wing of the airport, not after a six-hour absence.

It had been a lot longer than that for both of them, though.

As her breathing started to settle, Bucky soothingly smoothing her hair with his hand, he navigated them both back to the safety of her apartment. Even Darcy could see him appraise it with fresh eyes, running his fingers across the spines of her bookcase and standing in the same spot in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in her living room, just staring out at the city.

She sunk into the couch, legs too wobbly for anymore standing, mind still swimming in thoughts.

“What are you thinking about?” Darcy asked just above a whisper, desperate to get out of her own head.

“I don’t remember everything, but Doc says the oldest memories are the easiest to access most of the time,” Bucky murmured. “It’s all the in-betweens that are…”

Harder to access? Murky? Traumatizing? 

This wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and happily ever afters. Darcy knew that. She’d been going to therapy ever since London, with a whole host of her own problems to deal with— problems that felt a lot smaller than being brainwashed into an assassin on ice for several decades.

Her therapist’s voice rang through her head, reminding her not to compare traumas, but it was hard.

It was hard knowing what was done to him. What was forced on him.

It was hard to see how much it’d changed him.

“But, I remember, I brought you a blanket when you fell asleep on me,” he continued, staring at the cars below like he saw it in his mind’s eye. “You showed me New York— the New York of the future— and I thought it was just a dream. A crazy, vivid dream.”

She’d always wondered how he would have rationalized it to himself, if he would have chalked it up to a fever dream or some alien abduction theory. 

There was also a lot she didn’t quite understand herself— stuff that _Jane_ and Tony didn’t get either.

The scientist in Darcy still wanted all the answers. Wanted to know how exactly Bucky— _this_ Bucky could remember a past she didn’t even know existed in this reality. Wanted to know how, through all of the torture and brainwashing and modifications, he could even begin to remember that sliver of time, those five short days.

But Darcy, the human being— the one that missed having someone to share the apartment with, missing waking up to that goofy smile, missed when his Brooklyn accent slipped into his regular speech— was just happy to have him here again, no matter how improbable.

“You really remember me?”

Darcy patted the couch cushion beside her in invitation, comforted by the warmth returning as he sat down. Bucky took the corner of the blanket she offered him and settled in, eyes still glued to the window. 

It felt like those late nights they’d spent, talking over black and white movies, quizzing each other back and forth about their lives.

“I remember the fancy coffee drinks,” he said with a soft smile. “Never did find anything that tasted quite like ‘em when I got back. Stevie looked at me like I was crazy with the sugar I was dumping into my mug. But it never tasted the same.”

Darcy could’ve pinched herself, watching the way he took in the room he’d been in dozens of times over the past few weeks like it was the first time all over again. The way he looked at _her_ like it was that first time all over again.

She didn’t want to push him, letting him take the time to process and find his words.

“I remember seeing Steve through the peep-hole, not quite knowing who he was—” he looked a little bashful about the admittance, eyes dropping down with a chuckle. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t’ve looked, but it was so weird being stuck in this bubble.”

Darcy’s breath caught in her chest at his admission, that quiet wondering she’d had about his parting words weirdly making a little more sense.

“Must have been kind of scary,” Darcy offered, giving him an out.

But Bucky shook his head, his hand reaching out for hers and threading their fingers together, “No, I was never scared _with_ you. _For_ you was a whole other ballgame.”

Darcy huffed a nervous laugh, taking in the warmth from their interlaced hands and the blush dusting his cheeks. It was probably just from the laughter, she said, pushing aside the thoughts that would have explained why she too felt hot in the face.

Bucky continued, his smile dropping slightly as he admitted, “I also remember you in Europe. N-not everything… But— I just remember knowing I couldn’t let Hydra notice you— I knew they were after me, but I couldn’t let them realize who you were…”

Darcy’s eyes were already shining as she waited for the next thing on his list, the one he mouthed but couldn’t quite put the words to, struggling to find them. That telltale thumping in her ears, that laser focus on his features, looking for any tell, any morsel of information that would explain this pull between them.

Explain the way the universe seemingly decided they should somehow always find each other.

The scientist and the human being were all waiting for the punchline.

“It was stupid.”

“What was?” Darcy asked, eyebrow cocked as he stared at him.

Not quite meeting her eyes, he looked a little more frustrated, looking off to the side of the room like he was still trying to piece it together. Bucky looked her right in the eyes, jaw tight, “You going out there. Putting yourself in danger to find me.”

There was that guilt again, rearing its ugly head as she expected the worst. “Are you mad?”

“No, I…” Bucky seemed to think better of it, shaking his head.

His hand came up to brush some hair out of his face, fingers digging into his scalp like he was trying to massage away a headache. And there was that way his eyes seemed to drift— unfocused, mind elsewhere. 

It made Darcy a little nervous, her brain trying to cycle through the list of side effects Xavier had given them.

“What is it?” she asked after a few beats of silence, wondering if there was something he was struggling to put to words.

“I-I…” Bucky trailed off, eyeing her nervously like he was scare of the next thing he was about to say.

Which only made her more scared, but Darcy steeled herself, putting on a brave face as she squeezed his hand in reassurance. “You can tell me anything. I promise basically nothing you can say would be any crazier than the last six months of my life. Trust me.”

And for a moment, it looked like he wanted to— trust her— the jerk of a nod as he shifted a little in his seat. But before he could even get the words out, he seemed to give up, shaking his head and pulling his hand from her grasp.

“I can’t,” he said firmly, lifting himself off the couch in one smooth motion.

Darcy wasn’t sure whether to follow him or not, body half-cocked to pry herself out of the sofa’s hold. Bucky looked just as torn, eyes darting around the room like he was searching out an escape or an excuse — she couldn’t quite tell — before settling back on her.

There was something in his eyes, maybe remorse or even fear.

“I just— I’m not helping— I’m here, like this. With _this_ ,” Bucky stuttered to a stop, staring at his arm and then back at her like a deer in the headlights, “with you. I—I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize—” Darcy started, but Bucky was on his way out the door and calling back before she could finish her sentence.

Letting out the breath that had been trapped in her chest as the door slammed shut behind him, Darcy could already feel the pressure build behind her eyes. They had been so close— _so_ close to having some sort of breakthrough moment. 

But she had to remember _he was in there_ and progress wasn’t instant. They were the only facts on her mind, repeating over and over again like a mantra in her brain. Bucky was hurting, and he was confused, but he was in there, and he remembered her. Remembered his time in New York. Remembered why he followed her in Europe— well, mostly.

They’d done the work, made the choices, brought him home. Now they were on Bucky’s time. And even though her heart was running a mile a minute as she stared at the door, willing it to open, the truth was, Darcy would have waited as long as it took for him to be ready to say what he needed to.

And she’d be right here when he was.

* * *

It was three days later when he showed up on her doorstep. JARVIS notified her that he was outside in the hall before he could even work up the courage to knock. Prying open the door, she found him out there, eyes glued to the floor, arms across his chest.

“Wanna come inside?” Darcy asked, nudging her chin towards her apartment.

He offered a dim nod, shuffling in before she closed the door behind them. Bucky sat down on her couch, Darcy taking the other end to give him some space. She didn’t want to crowd him, not when everything was still so raw.

“I— I’m sorry for walking out. And not calling or nothing after,” Bucky mumbled after a minute of silence.

“Hey, you had a lot to process, Buck. It happens; it’s not a big deal,” Darcy tried to assure him, wanting nothing more than to reach over and take his hand.

She wasn’t about to ask him why, but he’d tell her anyway.

“I-I was scared.”

The words hung in the air before Darcy realized he was looking for something— a reaction or a reason, so Darcy tried to figure out where he was going with this. “Of remembering?”

Bucky shook his head, “Of being close to you. With this thing,” he said, watching as he turned his left palm over. “With my brain all messed up still. I feel like I’m putting you in danger—”

She’d noticed how jumpy he was when she got too close to his metal arm— watched him consciously reach out to her with his right hand whenever he was trying to get her attention. 

But now it was Darcy’s turn to interject, wanting to make one thing very clear.

“I have never felt like I was in danger with you.”

Sure, there had been some iffy moments in Europe, but as far as once they got back? She’d never worried about herself— it was always _him_. Wanting the best for Bucky, wanting him to get better. Wanting him to feel comfortable with Darcy. 

And that seemed to trip him up, forcing him out of his train of thought, his voice getting a little gruffer.

“Then you’re either a hell of a lot smarter than I am or very naive.”

Darcy took it in stride, layering in an airy shrug as she stood her ground.

“I’d like to think it’s the former, but maybe that’s because of the latter,” she said with a twist of her lips. Darcy was ready to throw herself a parade for getting a smile out of him, even if it was only on for a brief second before it slid off his lips. She dropped her voice down to a more serious tone as she added, “Or maybe it’s because I _trust_ you.”

That seemed to wipe all emotion from his face in one, easy go. His face settled back down to neutral. Darcy worried for a second that she’d pushed him too far, asked too much of him, that maybe her joke had hit a sore spot.

“There was something I needed to tell you— should’ve told you. Back then. Now.”

She could start to see the cracks in the facade, that all-too-familiar self-doubt shining through in the tiniest actions. The way he shuffled his weight from foot-to-foot, how he shoved his hands into his pocket to take her attention away from his fidgeting.

The way he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Hey, hey. It’s going to be fine,” Darcy assured in a soothing voice. “No matter what it is, we’ll figure out. It’ll be fine.”

But still, Bucky didn’t look so sure about that, fidgeting slightly. It was the most distracted she’d ever seen him, and she wondered if this was how he’d spent the last three days, nervously going over what he had to say and trying to gauge her response. 

Darcy’s stomach flipped in anticipation, but she kept her face neutral.

“This thing— _us_ — I always thought I was stupid for leaving because as much as I tried, I never felt that way again.” 

And Darcy’s heart stopped. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? 

Eyes wide, her body went full-tilt into panic mode, holding her breath and staring at Bucky, afraid he’d take it back. Afraid he’d mistaken her for someone else. Afraid she was hearing things.

But Bucky, calm as ever, squeezed their hands and asked, “Darcy, I’ve been up all week wondering if I imagined everything, if I hoped so hard that you were real that I made it into some sorta dream. But… is it really you?”

Like he was thinking the same thing.

“Yes,” Darcy croaked, throat tight and voice scratchy. “I swear on Odin, it’s me.”

And there was that beautiful twist of a smile on his face, the kind that brought out his dimples, and she half-wished she could take a photo of it in this moment. Darcy blinked back the haze in her eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay as she took it in— every second of it— wishing she could etch it into her memory forever.

But Bucky was too keen to continue, on a roll now as he asked, “Then, can I do what I should’ve done back then?”

Darcy’s heart was beating at a thousand beats a minute as she nodded, closing her eyes as his hand traced the line of her cheekbone and cradled her face.

It was like all the noise inside her head just stopped for a moment. Just a moment, as his lips finally met hers. One kiss, simple, sweet and chaste, seemed to go against everything she would’ve ever guessed James Buchanan Barnes would be. That soft, tender look in his eyes as he stared at her through his eyelashes. That blue that seemed to light up his eyes now.

Darcy had never been so happy to be wrong. In her entire life.

But there was still one more question on his mind.

“What do I do now?”

They’d spent so long fighting for the present, it’d been hard for Darcy to even imagine a future, never mind plan for one. But, this was the kind of question she could answer easily. Those three days waiting for him to be ready— to talk solidified precisely where she stood on the matter.

“Buck, you’ve spent all these years without a choice, without a say. I’m not going to take that away from you again,” Darcy offered, not wanting to influence his chance to make a decision for himself. “You should do whatever feels right for you, whatever you think is best for you.”

His fingers were playing with the hem of her shirt, smoothing the fabric as he looked down at her with those clear blue eyes.

“You feel right.”

And Darcy tried hard to keep the smile on her face, she really did, but something inside tugged at the corners of her mouth as she stared at him. Bucky seemed to notice, eyes searching her face as he tried to piece it together.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

She bit her lip, wondering if she should even admit it. If this type of guilt could even be helped. If she just deserved to live with it. But, taking a deep breath, Darcy tried to steady her nerves.

“I was _so_ worried. So worried I screwed you up, that this was my fault somehow because of what Jane and I did—” Darcy’s brain was going a thousand miles a minute. “And, oh my god, did I mess up your life? I was so scared, keeping myself up at night wondering if I freaked you out or—”

“Darcy.”

Her head snapped back to him as his voice rang out, clear as a bell and just as confident.

“All things considered, I ended up where I needed to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, we get an epilogue! Any guesses, hopes or wishes? Feel free to leave them in the comments. I promise I won’t spoil anything in the replies!
> 
> Thank you all so much again for the continued support and lovely comments.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading. All comments, kudos and bookmarks are loved and cherished.
> 
> See you next Thursday for the next chapter!


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